Beck, twenty years at La Pergola

Thursday April 17th was a special day for Heinz Beck, one focused around two numbers, the first being evident, the second half hidden: number 20 and 3. Twenty years, times two, because first the chef presented the menu which, as of May 1st, will celebrate the first 20 years of La Pergola’s extraordinary life, and then he announced the Contest Vent’anni (literally, Twenty years’ contest). The chef from Bavaria invited those who will turn twenty during 2014 to send him, via facebook, an original recipe. A jury will examine these recipes and choose five, and their respective authors will have to prepare them. The final winner will have to confront himself with those who work in Beck’s kitchen every day.

How about number three? Besides the day of birth, November 3rd 1963, there are the stars he holds, and the ones his twin brother holds himself (Hermann, “In my family there’s a Hermann in each generation, from father to son”, three children because there’s also a sister, Sabine). With one profound difference: those held by Heinz are branded Michelin (on the rooftop of a 5 star hotel) while his brother owns a three star hotel in England. Of course each one should do as he feels, the important thing is to be satisfied, while they move on different lanes that will never cross each other.

Beck’s golden adventure began almost by chance: “I was a chef in a restaurant in Berlin, Harlequin, in the first half of the 90s. In the winter of ‘93/94 the then director of Cavalieri, mister Hans Fritz, also German, called me, but we didn’t find an agreement. I had been recommended to him by Heinz Winkler for whom I had worked earlier, in Berlin. I wanted to move to Spain but we couldn’t find an agreement and then Berlin had just been reunited. Besides I’m an unusual German, one of the few who had never been to Italy. Everyone around me had travelled to Italy, not me. I only knew three words: pizza, Ferrari and espresso. Not only that: I was also about to leave the kitchen and return home, to work in the family’s jewellery shop”.

Then another call came: “Mister Fritz called me again, and this time it was a success. For me, because I didn’t tell my father, called Hermann of course, just like his father and his father’s father, I only said I would go to Italy for two years to learn the language and get a better understanding of the Italian culture. Instead, on August 1st 1994 I entered La Pergola. Everything needed to start from scratch and I had great memories and a strong desire to move ahead”.

For us, Italians, Beck is the “man from La Pergola”, but when in November 1989 the Wall fell – and the following year the capital returned to be Berlin – soon it was no longer forbidden for the President to welcome heads of state in Germany’s emblematic city. The first to be welcomed in grand style was a king, king Harald V of Norway, welcomed by Richard von Weizsäcker. “I had already planned small caterings for authorities, but nothing compared to that for the Scandinavia king. The protocol called five companies and asked them a proposal and a menu. Harlequin was the chosen restaurant. Eighty people serving one hundred and sixty guests, two plates per waiter and a very accurate schedule: the eighty waiters were perfectly lined up behind the guests, ready to serve the first dish at the expected signal, and then, a second later, the second dish too: paf, the right arm and paf the left one. Perfect, always at the very same moment”.

Heinz would not leave this behind. Cooking for the most powerful people in the world soon turned out to be his destiny.

1. To be continued