Massimiliano e Raffaele Alajmo
Credits Brambilla-Serrani
Here is the chef-enfant prodige of the world highest cuisine scene, Massimiliano Alajmo! Side by side with his brother Raffaele, he’s prolonging a triumphant march in the history of cuisine. Of course, it’s not easy to go beyond the three Michelin stars, received when he was almost a kid, but… On march 19 1994, when father Erminio and mum Rita Chimetto left them the keys of their restaurant (one-starred at that age) they couldn’t expect the creative disorder and the glorious jump that Massimiliano and Raffaele would switch on soon. Rita was the chef’s first teacher («he’s a cake sculptress», he likes to say) while Erminio teached the maître Raffaele how to handle a restaurant with care, irony and savoir faire.
But Massimiliano was not satisfied with the family teachings and went soon to France to cook with Michel Guérard and Marc Veyrat , from whom he learned how to move with very precise and clear neatness, an ability furtherly improved by frequent escapades gourmands to the high cuisine French and Spanish sanctuaries. Awarded with the second star when he was just 22, he got the third at 28, being the youngest 3-starred chef in the history of Michelin ever. His nicknamed “Mozart of high cuisine” comes from his precociousness but also from the culinary depth that hides under his brilliant, free and easy surface.
To speak to Massimiliano means to experiment the seriousness of a game, philosophical and even religious issues that expressive decency and esthetical transfiguration metamorphosise into flashes of very simple pleasures. That is, the metaphysics of a tomato or a fish filet ruled by technique and strictness. Massi’s cuisine is very modern but loved even by kids, neither banal or conceptual, between tradition and avant-garde. That is, beyond definition. A rope-dancer on a perfect balance.
Has participated in
Identità London, Identità Milano
In addition to the Calandre of Rubano, Padua (3 Michelin stars since 2003), today the Alajmo group controls La Montecchia and ABC Montecchia in Selvazzano (Padua), Il Calandrino in Sarmeola (Padua), Caffè Quadri (which is a 3 in one restaurant: ABC Quadri, Gran Caffè and Quadri restaurant) and bistro Amo in Venice, Caffè Stern in Paris and the Sesamo restaurant of the Royal Mansour in Marrakech
born in Parma in 1963, he directs the Guida Vini dell'Espresso and is the author of various books, the latest of which is "Il Cuoco universale. La cultura del piatto" (Marsilio)