To explain my path in life and in my career, I need only answer two questions: why did I start this job? And why do I still love it to this today?
It’s simple, I started by following my passion.
Ever since I was a young boy, I would watch my grandmother cooking in the kitchen. I could spend hours under the table watching her hands create Orecchiette pasta - those individual works of art that resemble small ears! The sounds of simmering and browning in her pots was like music to my very own ears!
Beginning with those smells and those gestures, my dream was brought to life. And so it all began, as fast as the train that at the age of 17 took me to Vico Equense, straight to Gennaro Esposito’s “La Torre del Saracino” (The Saracen’s Tower - 2 Michelin Stars).
I truly learned a lot there: first and foremost to be respectful and then, just as importantly, that fish does not smell but has an aroma. In fact, my first assignment was to wash the restaurant’s fish directly in the sea, using the very same water that had nurtured it.
I learned that cooking, even at the gourmet level, must never lose sight of two things: the traditions of the land from which it is conceived and its substance - its concreteness.
From that moment on, everything was in a state of evolution.
Moving to the Ristorante Vintage 1997 in Turin (1 Michelin Star) where I entered the kitchen as a commis chef and left as sous chef, I learned the traditions of Piedmontese cuisine, experienced the golden year of the 2006 Winter Olympics and gained an understanding of the importance of consistency and determination.
I also grew to appreciate that cooking itself is the last thing one must learn in a kitchen: organization, cleanliness and discipline come first.
I then dedicated myself to the ambitious cuisine of fine dining at the Magorabin restaurant (1 Michelin Star) where ‘research’ was the maxim.
I had the honor of being sous chef in the year that the restaurant was awarded it’s Michelin Star.
It was my subsequent experiences abroad that made me understand even more clearly the direction my path could lead me.
At the Sheraton in Bangkok, for example, I understood how both dining and Italian cuisine are experienced within a large international hotel.
In Beijing during the 2008 Olympics where I collaborated with sports nutritionists, I understood how even an athlete with strict pre-competition diets does not necessarily have to renounce the pleasures of the palate.
It was ultimately my own restaurant, the Ristorante Allegri, which I opened with my wife in 2012, that wrapped these thousand experiences together into a single parcel, shook them up well, and created what is now my identity, defining my style, and answering the question:
Who is Federico Allegri?
And it is precisely this identity of mine that I brought with me during my experience as a private chef, accompanying the family I worked for in their most intimate moments and also representing them in the context of their business. And here we come to the point:
Why do I love my job?
Because it never fails to excite me: its many facets allow me to evolve continuously and to see the big picture so that I might always find new paths to follow, while also helping others realise their own ideas and dreams.
