Chiara Patracchini

Try to put Bottura's liveliness upside down, chop Scabin's cordial extroversion, turn down the odd Vissani-type's theatrical noisiness and you'll get Chiara Patracchini. «I'm not used to speaking in public, I prefer to remain in the shadow, unobserved...», and so saying she shakes you with an angelic smile, a little mysterious and shy, like the place she comes from. An applause from the audience, please. Make them two, in fact : one to encourage her, as she's young and timid; the second, however, is for her merit alone, because she's really good, awarded a few months ago as best pastry chef by those of Identità Golose, us, in other words, with all our farsightedness. Chiara Patracchini is a real daughter of the Canavese territory (on her mother's side, the father is from Rovigo). To be honest, she's closer to the poet Guido Gozzano than to the politician Massimo D’Azeglio, just to mention two fellow countrymen; so, quoting the poet, she's like good things of excellent taste, or, if one wants to give her the praise given to Gozzano himself, she's «a flower destined to generate a fruit». Even better, she's similar to Adriano Olivetti from nearby Ivrea, because a good pastry chef must also be a meticulous engineer of ingredients, and, on top of that, a real ideologist of his sweet world.

We're talking of this territory because with it is intertwined the story of Patracchini: born in Cirié in June 1982, she grew up, in age and profession, in the same area: waitress in 1996 at the age of fourteen, assistant chef in 1999... Having finished her hotel and restaurant studies in Lanzo Torinese, everything changed after meeting Giovanni Grasso from La Credenza in S. Maurizio, during a Regional course held, among the others, by Luca Montersino. Under the aegis of the starred chef from the Canavese area, she travelled for short periods to gain experience in Jakarta, Indonesia (at the Shangri-la) and in New York (first at Eataly, then at the San Domenico) or, nearer, by lake Como's waters at the Mistral, in Bellagio.

«In the kitchen, I started as a junior cook, working in all stations, but then ended up, by vocation, in the pastry department, having the good luck of being supervised by a chef like Igor Macchia who taught me the preparation of desserts», she explains now that her revisited tiramisù has become an almost classical specialty. Her style? «For a recipe to succeed, four elements are essential: consistence, crunchiness, creaminess and acidity». Just like in one of her latest creations, the Saffron biscuit with Tainori chocolate and hazelnut ice-cream...