15-06-2020
Giulia Caffiero, born in 1992 in Cagliari, has been working at Geranium in Copenhagen since October 2019. After the Danish lockdown in March, the restaurant - 3 Michelin stars, number 5 in the World's 50Best – opened again on June 3rd
It’s strange to think that I love my job more than myself. At the same time, this is a job I would have never thought of doing. I’ve never studied dining room service nor attended catering school: I attended the liceo classicoand always thought I would dedicate my life to art. Indeed, I enrolled into the faculty of Cultural Goods, in Cagliari. Only now I realise I’ve focused my life on a different art from what we would usually think, the art of hospitality. I think that my entire journey can be summed up in just one word, “love”. Love for work, for dining room service, for people, for food. I started my career in 2013, at Cucina.eat, a great opportunity. Giuseppe Carrus and Alessandra Meddi guided me into the restaurant world (completely unknown to me) explaining how it worked, and all the goodness it had. In particular, Giuseppe introduced me to the wine world, he was a master and passed me the same passion that today I try to convey to each client. After two years, I decided to go to Milan, to Marco Ambrosino’s 28 Posti. Here I became aware that dining room service was my future. Every time a client smiled, it was adrenaline, my daily drug, what pushed me to improve day after day. The chef taught me to love food and raw materials; Iris Romano instead taught me how to present what we serve, hospitality, and taking care of each single guest. After almost two years, however, I felt something was missing. I wasn’t complete and the fact I had never studied service techniques revealed to be a great inner lack for me. So I arrived at Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia. Here too I found a great master, maître Nicola dell’Agnolo: he immediately understood he had to smoothen my skills and be very patient. He taught me discipline, precision, attention to detail, discretion. With their dishes full of love and history, Alessandro Negrini and Fabio Pisani lit up in me the desire to tell secrets. After two springs, at 27, I decided to leave again this new “home”. All three restaurants have been, in some way, a home to me. I felt I had to improve more, and so in October 2019 I decided to go to Copenhagen.
With chef Rasmus Kofoed
With Mattia Spedicato, from Lecce
Creamy beans with butter, pumpkin seeds and cooked and raw vegetables, one of the dishes at Angelika, the new plant-based temporary restaurant of Geranium. The menu includes 8-9 dishes and costs 650 Danish krowns (around 90 euros). Photo Claes Bech-Poulsen
We’re very excited because it’s a new project, a temporary restaurant inside Geranium. It’s called Angelika, from Gerd Angelika, the chef’s mother who taught Rasmus to love vegetables. It will be a plant-based restaurant (that is to say no ingredients of animal origin), inside our inspiration kitchen, a project that the chef had been working on for a while. Open only at lunchtime, it will represent the cuisine of Geranium but in a simpler way, more convivial and accessible. I’m so happy to be working again. And to convey once again to the world all the joy of a special restaurant.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
The public side of a restaurant seen by its protagonists: maître, restaurant managers, waiters
by
born in Cagliari in 1992, after working at Cucina.Eat in Sardinia, 28Posti and Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia in Milan, she arrived at Geranium in Copenhagen, 3 Michelin stars, in October 2019
Eric Vildgaard and Tina Kragh Vildgaard, the two souls of restaurant Jordnær in Denmark
Amass, restaurant with vegetable garden (photo facebook/amass)
Ten questions for a perfect dining room service
Knowledge for training