Milan applauds Giacomo Bulleri

Scene one: it is 1980, Giacomo Bulleri survived a serious car crash immobilising him with a plaster cast from the groin to the feet. Months of forced rest, then one day he’s really fed up: he takes everything off and slips into the kitchen, uttering: «I want to do my rehabilitation here, by the stove. Work will be therapeutic». Doctors are appalled, they try to convince him to desist, but he’s a stubborn man from Tuscany. The result: «He recovered much sooner than expected».

This episode is told by his daughter Tiziana, and finely depicts the life and personality of one of the many people Milan has adopted, and to whom it owns a lot. Rewards included: as the one he will be handed tomorrow, the highest acknowledgement in town, the Ambrogino d’Oro.

Today Bulleri, born in 1925, is a 90-year-old who has no intention to pass as a pensioner, «my greatest fortune in life was that of doing a job that thrills me, always». Like when a friend comes to dine, perhaps an illustrious one, and he does his best to serve him his favourite dish. He was and still is used to famous guests: Michelle Obama was recently seen at Giacomo Arengario’s together with her daughters.

Having trained, during the course of his career, around one thousand restaurant professionals, he’s a witness of Italian cooking history. He arrived in Milan in 1956, leaving his hometown Collodi, where he was born in 1925. A truly fertile place: hometown to Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio’s father, to begin with, but also – it is a hamlet of Pescia – to two other great chefs, Enrico Bartolini and Aimo Moroni, 9 years his junior.

Just like Aimo, Bulleri comes from the “Tuscan flood”, populating the town with infinite restaurants, between the Fifties and Sixties. Today ribollita soup and Florentine steaks can hardly resist the assault of sushi and sashimi, the invasion now being from Japan. Giacomo has always remained faithful to his style of restaurant, yet without useless conservatism. Of course he’s strongly connected to the past, «today true and genuine flavours aren’t considered important enough. I love traditional style, I adore moving around pots, selecting ingredients. Bringing back scents, without hiding them». However, let’s make it clear, he’s not stuck in the past.

In 2015 Giacomo Bulleri means the prestigious Arengario, then the Via Sottocorno restaurant, which is also a bistro and a tobacconist and where the establishment moved in the Nineties leaving Via Donizetti; finally, there’s the café in Piazza Duomo… A lot but not too much: «The world changes, we move on: there’s always something you can learn, I don’t like to become fossilized. The exchange with other cuisines is fertile, it helps getting new ideas». However, the foundations must be safeguarded: this is why the new year will still have Bulleri active with the opening of a new establishment that goes back to his origins, «there’s already lots of diversity around us, we want to reassure, we will present traditional dishes». This is a countertrend that becomes trendy itself.