Aimo and Nadia, 60 years of love in the kitchen

Aimo 88, Nadia six years his junior. He arrived at TWELVE, a number which, out of respect, I’ll write in capital letters. Born in Pescia on the 27^th of January 1934, he took his first train to Milan on the 21^st of April 1946. World War II had ended the previous year and the capital of Lombardy appeared as the American dream. You just had to have the necessity, more than the will, to work, and the heart of the Milanese would take care of the rest. So in Via Montecuccoli they’re getting ready to celebrate 60 years of life and work side by side. What’s their secret? Nadia says: «Firstly, we love each other. Then the capacity of overcoming small glitches, which if ignored might become a problem. Finally, mutual respect».

What a beginning it was. Aimo: «I remember the steam train and the cattle wagons adapted to transport people. I got on the train in Prato and arrived in Milan around 14 hours later, the same time we need to get to Tokyo now when they invite us to cook there. I wasn’t starving, because I made ends meet, but I lived in a room with no heating and it was hard in the winter because the cold and the damp got into your bones». Nadia would arrive, also at twelve, in 1952. Three years later, on the 27^th of June 1955 they were cooking in the first restaurant: «It was in Via Copernico, I had rented the kitchen in a bar-tobacconist shop in which the owner didn’t like to cook. It was a Triplex, not a wood kitchen, and it was already a big improvement».

And if there’s many of us in the past few weeks who are writing about Aimo and Nadia it’s because they have decided, with their heirs, firstly their daughter Stefania, and then Fabio Pisani and Alessandro Negrini in the kitchen, Nicola Dell’Agnolo and Alberto Piras in the dining room and cellar, to celebrate the first sixty years of Il Luogo. «We moved to Via Montecuccoli, in the far Western outskirts in 1962. I was 28 and at last I had my name on the license. We arrived here because everything was cheap. There was no tarmac in the streets, there were some factories and lots of traffic because Milano was changing. Two years later, for instance, they destroyed Cascina Arzaga. You could find there, people told me, cattle and everything you’d find in a nice farm which, unfortunately, was no longer of interest. The city was growing and needed new houses, not high standard farms ».

They found a «bar where people could play bowls, a pergola with wisteria and centennial plants under which you could rest in peace in the shade, round tables with stone top, five greens for bowls, and quite good bread and salami… At first we would mostly make food for the workers from the building sites. A new Milano was growing, similar to what is happening these years thanks to the Expo, and people were working hard so that it could take shape. Nadia and I tried to feed them with a good hot meal and some worthy bread».

But this wasn’t enough for them: «We immediately changed name. At first it was called Caffè Montecuccoli Trattoria. Then Bar Trattoria da Aimo, then Da Aimo Trattoria Toscana and in 1987 Ristorante Aimo e Nadia. The sign shining to this day dates back to 1998: Il luogo di Aimo e Nadia. For everyone, it is now Il Luogo, a recovered space where almost everyone has passed. Massimo Bottura one day said that the kitchen of Aimo was like the Italian flag while Antonio Ricci never stops thanking him for having fed his three daughters with bread and tomato.

I adore him for the Zuppa Etrusca, a sublimation of minestrone, created in 1972, Spaghettoni with shallot from Tropea and chilli pepper from Diamante,

del 1965, and for a recipe that I also included in my book XXL, 50 piatti che hanno allargato la mia vita, published in 2014, but which the protagonist, a few days ago during a dinner in via Montecuccoli for the preview of a unique series of events, didn’t recall: Spaghetti lentils and veal kidney. It often happens that the kitchen serves some tests to see what effect they generate. For me, I was struck, but clearly this didn’t happen to everyone.

The nicest compliment, because it was true, came from professor Umberto Veronesi: «Aimo, you sell health». And to celebrate sixty years of delicious Italian wellbeing at Il Luogo they have created a programme of six dinners, one for each decade, starting from the 13^th of July with recipes and years between 1962 and 1971.

On the 13^th of September it will be the turn of 1972/81; on the 27th 1982/91; on the 11^th of October 1992/2001 and on the 25^th 2002/2011. The finale on the 8^th of November when, with a menu called Territori, they won’t celebrate just the 2012/2022 decade but also the first ten seasons of Pisani and Negrini as executive chefs. They were good in following a method while making use of their creativity, without forgetting the lesson of their master: «Quality will forgive you». Buying the right products from the market has always solved any mistake made in the kitchen.

For info and reservations: +39.02.416886, info@aimoenadia.com.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso