The ability of being Cracco

Carlo Cracco and the importance of seizing the moment.

Carlo Cracco, born in 1965, is an internationally renowned Italian chef and television personality, he was a judge in the MasterChef Italia program.

The Chef’s career began in Milan, during the years in which he worked with Gualtiero Marchesi, an institution of the Ital- ian culinary scene. After that, he worked in Garlenda, in the restaurant La Meridiana, and in Paris, in the restaurant of chef Alain Ducasse. Once back in Florence, he became Eno- teca Pinchiorri’s first chef, earning his three stars on the Michelin Guide. With the opening of Le Clivie, ha was soon awarded with one Michelin star, and with two other stars for his work in his restaurant Cracco Peck. He is chef patron of Cracco restaurant, owner of OVO by Cracco in Moscow and of several other restaurants in the center of Milan.

Carlo Cracco, undoubtedly one of the maximum exponents of contemporary Italian cooking, does not need an introduction.

In these years we’ve read and heard everything about him and yet among criticisms, judgments and conjectures, no one has been able to grasp the simplest of truths. The will to reach one’s goals is the only quality that no one can teach us because it lives only in the heart of those who are firmly determined to succeed. If Carlo has become Cracco, it’s because he was determined to seize any opportunity, no matter how small. His story is thereforethat of a man who, in order to realize his dreams, understood that he had to reinvent himself, even if that meant leaving his beloved kitchen.

Carlo Cracco got this far on his own, he never had money or any help from his family, and he learned the most important lesson of life: “if you have to, you do it”, because anything can help you reach your goals. And this doesn’t mean getting your hands dirty, but simply knowing how to seize all the opportunities. If then you add commitment and perseverance, you’re able to make the im- possible possible.

The talent in cooking and the creativity of his recipes made him a famous chef all over the world, and television has only made him known to the general public. Carlo Cracco has made a breach in people’s palate because he was able to revolutionize traditional dishes with simple and essential inventions. It seems easy to say, but in real life you can deviate from tradition only after having deeply understood its essence. He defines his cuisine as “cere- bral and heartfelt” because a constant search for innovation must never forget taste emotions.

With the first season of Masterchef Italia, Carlo Cracco became a media phenomenon, and, thanks to him, the world of haute cui- sine entered our living rooms. Those who couldn’t even cook an egg were suddenly able to cook. In the beginning everything was great: people were passionate about cooking and everyone wanted to be Cracco. So much so that in 2015, for the first time, the number of enrollments in the hotel industry had passed that of technical institutes.

Since 2011, the hurricane Carlo seemed unstoppable: he was the testimonial of large companies, an important TV personality, the protagonist of a thousand interviews and a successful entre- preneur. Then, in 2017, the wet blanket: Michelin takes away one of the two stars from Cracco’s restaurant in Via Victor Hugo. And all the people who were tearing their hair out waiting for a new episode of their favorite TV show were the same ones who said that he deserved it because he “thought more about the spot- light than the stove”. But this didn’t stop Cracco because, for him, being aware of your talents, without losing sight of your goal, is more important. Life isn’t a peaceful journey: when you meet an adversity, you have to tell yourself that you are back at the starting point. What better place to try again.

What makes Carlo Cracco special is undoubtedly his spirit. He has the pride to do well his job, a firm discipline but also a great foresight. He is often asked what’s the secret of his success and he replies that it’s perseverance and constancy at work, and it’s in his work that he gives his best, searching for excellence at any cost. In the restaurant industry this means choosing the best in- gredients, putting your heart into every dish and educating the young cooks in your brigade.

Carlo Cracco entered the restaurant world when he was only fourteen years old because his professor at the “Pellegrino Artu- si” Hotel Institute in Recoaro Terme had given him four in cooking class. At that time he couldn’t imagine that one day he would become an internationally known chef.

After his studies, in 1986 he began his professional career along- side Gualtiero Marchesi in Milan, the first Italian restaurant to be awarded 3 Michelin stars, home of Italian nouvelle cuisine. After only two years, he joined the kitchen of Relais & Chateaux - La Meridiana in Garlenda but then moved to France with Alain Ducasse at Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and with Alain Sander- ens at Lucas Carton in Paris. With these internships he couldn’t even pay his rent and doing other jobs was the only way to make ends meet. Back in Italy in 1991, he became chef de cuisine at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, which after two years obtained 3 Michelin stars under his strict management.

In the same year, Marchesi called him back for the opening of L’Albereta in Erbusco, but in 1996 he finally decided to open his own restaurant, Le Clivie, in Piobesi D’Alba, which obtained its first Michelin star one year later.

The definitive success, however, came in Milan when, in 2000, the Stoppani family, owner of the famous Peck delicatessen in Milan, approached Cracco and offered him the opportunity of a new joint venture, the Cracco-Peck restaurant which in three years obtained 2 Michelin stars. In July 2007, Cracco takes it over renaming it simply “Cracco” and in the same year the restaurant was voted in the list of the “50 best restaurants in the world” by Restaurant Magazine. Since 2012 he has been running the line of “Carlo and Camilla in Segheria” in the Navigli area of Milan, while at the end of October 2016 he opened his “Ovo” in Moscow. But it’s on February 21, 2018 that he sees the realization of his biggest dream with the opening of “Ristorante Cracco” in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, in a prestigious and elegant restaurant arranged on 5 floors.

But that’s not all. In 2019, “Carlo e Camilla in Duomo” was born, a place where you can experience the bar from breakfast until after dinner or go to the restaurant to enjoy a gourmet dinner.

In December of the same year, the e-commerce “Cracco Ex- press” was also launched and in a short time it literally exploded. At the beginning treated as the youngest son - on the other hand who could imagine a worldwide pandemic - it has already be- come a very important part of the company: the protagonist of Cracco’s many ideas for the future.

The year 2020 marked another important milestone for Cracco, who, together with his wife Rosa Fanti, decided to buy a farm in Santarcangelo in Romagna, his wife’s homeland. Cherries, peach- es, plums, khakis, but also olive trees and wine vines: these are some of the products that Rosa and Carlo will produce in their new role as agricultural entrepreneurs. A part of them is transformed into fruit juices, jams and marmalades, while the other ends up on the tables of the restaurants that the chef manages in Milan.

And as if that were not enough, spring 2021 will see the opening of Cracco’s restaurant in Portofino, formerly “Il Pitosforo”, a his- toric restaurant in the Ligurian town overlooking the port and the village and a popular destination for the international jet set.

It’s only by putting ourselves to the test day after day that we can understand what we are really capable of. If we keep going, even if it’s just one step at a time, sooner or later we’ll achieve a great result. And Cracco explained it to me in few simple words: “You must always be humble enough to understand that you never really make it. Make sure of always being the best and, at the same time, always question both. Make sure you never become big-headed but don’t get depressed either. If you can find that balance, you can go on forever.”

Many interviews, countless appearances on TV, but then there’s nothing, really, about you. Nowhere, for example, do you explain why you decided to take up this job. Why did you decide to study at the Hotelier Institute? Was it pure curiosity or was it because you didn’t know what to do with your life??

Well, that’s obvious [he laughs]. Let’s say that when I had to choose where to go to study, I chose the school in the mountains in Recoaro because it was nice and seemed like a quiet place. Vicenza in those years was very lively and I didn’t want to stay there. The “Pellegrino Artusi” Hotel Institute seemed perfect for me: I had to take the train, make my own trip and walk to school. I would leave at 5:30 in the morning and then return home in the evening.

And what do you remember from that time?

In the first school quarter I had four in cooking class – that was me and three or four other people who weren’t?son of artists?- while everyone else already knew how to move around nimbly. So, when we were in the kitchen these classmates knew everything while I didn’t even know what a cutting board was. My professor told my parents that I seemed to be good at it, but that I kept asking questions and that I was starting to be a pain in the ass. Because of this, he told me to go work to see if I had a knack for it or not. So, on Saturdays and Sundays, the only days I didn’t go to school, I started working and, within three months, I went from a four in cooking class to an eight. I must say that I was lucky because the owners of the restaurant where I worked liked me. And I was ready to receive their teachings and I believed their words. In fact, on the first day I burned myself, the second day I cut myself, and on the third day I don’t know what happened, but they told me that by the fourth day things would be better. And they were right.

All of this confirms a thought of mine. I believe that in our life journey we meet people who help us get closer to our goals. Who are these people for you?

Definitely Mario Baratto, the chef of the restaurant in Vicenza. But the person who made me make the leap was Tony Sarcina. I had come to take a course here in Milan organized by him and in which Marchesi was also teaching. In the last days I asked him if there was a way to join his team. He told me there was no place. So I decided to come and work in Milan with him at Altopalato. At that time, chefs from restaurants in other regions who had a star would come to Milan to present their cuisine, and I worked as an assistant for everyone. I was there for two or three months and then I finally got an interview with Marchesi.

How important is training young chefs to you?

It’s very important to me, but it’s up to the people to accept what I say or to let go of the teachings or of the advices. A chef is the- oretically the chef of the kitchen and if he is, he is because he can put his hands everywhere and because he can have his say on everything. That’s why he’s called a chef de cuisine. So, the fact that he passes on isn’t only to teach but also to give a different perspective. His eye and his experience help kids look at what they’re working on from different perspectives. A chef’s job is to observe the kid and to make him understand how he’s working, how hard he’s working, whether he’s safe or not, whether he’s on time or not: these are all indicators that tell you if he’s ready or how much time he still needs to be ready. So my job is to en- hance a kid’s skills: when someone is good at doing “a” then I teach him to do “b”.

And if we talk about values? What values do you try to con- vey every day?

Discipline, for example, is important to avoid going off topic. Be- cause going off-topic is easy when working in a kitchen. It’s fun- damental that a young person understands that once he chooses to enter the kitchen of a restaurant, it’s difficult to leave. The diffi- culty is therefore that of being able to stay in the kitchen while maintaining a high level of passion, strength, determination, dis- cipline while having clear objectives. It’s a whole set of values that must be transmitted. But then you have to understand what kind of kid you’re dealing with, because they’re not all the same. We have to understand what their qualities are, and make, the most of them.

If you could talk to the 20-year-old Carlo, what would you tell him?

I would tell him to do what he feels like, no more or less than I did. I would tell him that you always have to be humble enough to understand that you never really make it, that you have to be sure that you’re always the best and at the same time always question both. Because this ensures you’re never get too big-headed but also not depressed. If you can find that balance, you can go on forever. Because it’s easy to get depressed, but it’s even easier to get your head over heels. Falling is its direct consequence.

When did you decide to leave the kitchen and why?

I simply followed in the footsteps of my master Marchesi: on one hand, he believed that it was necessary to protect our sector by promoting the training of young people and, on the other, that it was necessary to find new ways to survive. If today there’s all this interest around cooking, we certainly have to thank him and all the old guard: Guido Alciati, the Cantarelli family, Nino Bergese, Angelo Paracucchi, Fulvio Pierangeli-ni, Gianfranco Vissani. We arrived later. But then there were no young chefs and before you could be someone you had to spend at least thirty years in the kitchen. Nowadays, award-winning chefs are always younger and younger and there are so many more of them and they are positioned all over Italy. This was possible because all the oldguard worked to make people understand how important the restaurant industry is.

Today, all of us chefs represent an enormous force that should be channeled in the right direction. We should try to safeguard and protect this sector because otherwise we will end up losing it. Opening a restaurant is very complicated: even if there are only three people, they still are three people who must have skills, and, therefore, professional figures should be valued, trained and protected. If today, despite everything, we are still able to have our say, it’s because we have sown so much in the past. So, we must continue to train the new generations to promote the growth of our sector. Whether it’s done through television, books or consultancy it doesn’t matter: it’s not that one way excludes the other, they’re all important forms of communication and must be used in the right way.

And then, as I said before, unlike in the past, catering as we do it, isn’t a catering that allows you to earn money or invest your money. Today you do it because you have investors who believe in you or you have the opportunity to do it because you become an entrepreneur. That’s why I decided to take the opportunity with television. You don’t decide out of curiosity, you decide because maybe at that moment it’s the best choice. Work has changed so much since I started. Once, with a restaurant, you could make a living and, if you were successful, you could easily maintain it. You would buy it, renovate it, build your cellar and you could take your fancy. That’s not the case today. Once, you sold your license and that was your retirement. Today your license is worth less than scrap paper.

Now you are also an agricultural entrepreneur. What can you tell me about the Farm you took over with your wife in Emil- ia-Romagna?

Well, when Rosa decided to do it, I immediately supported her because I like the contact with the land and then the idea of being somehow self-sufficient has always fascinated me: now we produce our own oil, wine, vegetables and fruit. And then recovering a territory is in some way our way of helping to safeguard the ecosystem. We have taken a farm to put it back on its feet by following the values that are important to us: for example, the safeguarding of the biosphere within the Estate. Each thing helps the other and each thing serves to fight, prevent or cure the earth and the plants. One part of the products is processed into fruit juices, jams and marmalades, the other ends up on the tables of my restaurants and it really has another flavor.

In these years you have inaugurated many beautiful realities. 2021 will be the year of Cracco in Portofino, can you tell me something about it?

The idea came from a suggestion by Alessandro Ruggle. He had told me that there was this opportunity in Portofino. I told him that I had absolutely no desire to jump into something new. You see, that’s how new projects always come about with me: first I say I don’t feel like it and then they become my most important projects. A few months went by and I convinced myself to go to Portofino and I saw this place: the Pitosforo. In a moment I saw Cracco again in the Gallery in Portofino: it was the ideal location for a new restaurant. And then I was convinced because Portofino is close to Milan and above all because I could design the restaurant from scratch. Now we have finished the structural part, then we will start with the interiors and by Easter 2021 we should be ready. It will become the Cracco restaurant dedicated to the sea and we will try to do it without creating a shock: on one hand we want to respect tradition and on the other we will try to bring our experience and our desire to do. And then, from an entrepre- neurial point of view, this opportunity allows us to open a new front, especially in the summer period. We must always be far-sighted. Planning for a longer period of time allows you to identify some fundamental aspects that go beyond and can become important over time. For example, the position and importance of the location. I would never have done this in Forte dei Marmi, what would have been the point?

In my opinion, to be an entrepreneur, one must not be afraid to take risks and the fact that you decided to take the plunge makes me understand that, unlike thousands of others, you were able to seize the opportunity despite the risks.

Well, yes, it’s easier to do the opposite.

So, it’s not so obvious that you opened in the Galleria and Portofino....

But it should become so because if you’re in this business and you want to do it well and you want to leave a mark, you have to try starting with these things. But it’s not for everyone. In my case it’s much easier than sticking to old certainties or to my routine.