25-03-2016
Rainer Becker, originally from Germany with lots of experience in Australia and Japan before arriving in London in 2000 and opening two years later the first of ten Zuma restaurants, one of which has just opened in Rome, offering Japanese cuisine. In the photo, Rainer with Massimiliano Blasone, the chef who’ll the Roman establishment
There are arrogant people who think they have climbed Everest without oxygen, and in fact they have just had a stroll on Alpine paths, and others who really step 8,000 metres from the ground and almost keep it to themselves. German Rainer Becker, from a village of little over one thousand people in the Moselle region, belongs to the second and less substantial group. For years, during the last century, he was a valuable executive chef at Park Hyatt, first in Sydney, then in Tokyo. Putting the basic curiosity aside, a long series of no’s pronounced by a colleague who inside the same establishment in Tokyo ran the kaiseki restaurant was crucial. «I was attracted to Japanese cuisine and as soon as I had a spare moment, I would join him and he would turn his back to me. He literally didn’t want me to watch him work. I would ask him how he did something and he stood quiet. But I insisted and I once told him I didn’t like tofu so he made me taste his. A world opened in front of my eyes and he opened up with me».
According to an article on Bloomberg from the summer of 2015, when it arrived in New York, the group, which has the brand Zuma as the crown jewel, has 3,000 employees and a turnover of over 200 million dollars. The first to be astonished, in a way, is Becker himself: «I was born in a family of engineers and when I turned 18 I should have gone to university but moved ahead and told my father I wanted to be a chef when I grew up. I must say he didn’t stand in the way,
And now here he is, guiding a restaurant empire. Zuma was chosen because it sounds good a bit for everyone, it’s easy to remember and it’s impossible to mistake its pronunciation. It doesn’t mean a thing, unless you pronounce it differently. Then it stands for second wife. When in doubt, better not go with the first wife if you’re in a crisis.
A concrete and cordial person, who doesn’t brag, and he could, Rainer in Rome only got emotional when he learnt that at a pre-opening event Ornella Muti had come by, and he wasn’t there. He lightened up and so those close to him arranged so that the actress would return on the first official day, on Tuesday 22nd, with him present. When he saw her, they say not even ripe tomatoes can give a good idea of the colour his face turned.
1. To be continued
A mouth watering page, published every Sunday in Il Giornale from November 1999 to the autumn of 2010. Stories and personalities that continue to live in this website
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born in Milan in March 1955, at Il Giornale for 31 years dividing himself between sports and food, since 2004 he's the creator and curator of Identità Golose. blog www.paolomarchi.it instagram instagram.com/oloapmarchi