Masterchef Carlo Cracco is a Constellation of Contradictions
Trained in Italian nouvelle cuisine but offering his own diners a choice between classic Milanese dishes or radically reimagined recipes.
By Kay Sexton, Contributor
Respect, adapt, exploit – the polarities of Carlo Cracco
Chef Cracco’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele restaurant complex is a perfect recreation of the original 19th century Galleria in Milan, fitted with every mod con and novel feature. Cracco trained in Monte Carlo and Paris as well as working at the Gualtiero Marchesi kitchen in Milan, the first Italian restaurant to win three Michelin stars. Truly an international background with an unmatched dedication to using local ingredients and authentic cuisine. For that, he is the President of Maestro Martino, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the best authentic cuisine and the highest quality Italian food and delicacies.
However, there’s something that unites these contradictions – and it’s not just Carlo Cracco’s optimistic personality.
Another example of the contradiction reveals the unity: while Carlo Cracco has developed some astonishing culinary creations such as the coffee lens and sheets of fish that can be draped like silk, through his many travels he’s also visited Bhutan to explore how local farmers are rediscovering traditional crops that can help protect them from the ravages of climate change. As he says “… exploit the land in a good, positive and healthy way” by “adapting to nature” and “if you want to be cool, respect what you eat.”
Image: Carlo Cracco
As an ambassador with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Carlo Cracco is dedicated to respecting local foods, adapting to local circumstances and exploiting all that is best in a cuisine, a culture, a terrain, to delight the senses.
Respecting food, for Carlo Cracco, includes producing astonishing, innovative combinations like oysters with kidney or capers and liquorice. Adapting it means exploring everything that an ingredient or dish is capable of, and exploiting, in the positive sense, means sharing, communicating and reaching out to the widest possible audience to share his sense of food’s ability to restore, recreate and empower.
Carlo Cracco believes in this philosophy dedicated to giving a dish the full potential to reach new heights, and he surely puts this principle into practice every day. In 2020, at the height of the lockdown he cooked for free for the builders, carpenters and bricklayers turning Milan’s exhibition centre pavilions into the temporary Ospedale Fiera Milano for covid-19 patients. He cooks pizza for his children and constantly advocates people being better educated about food and their own local ingredients, recipes and heritage.
“...exploit the land in a good, positive and healthy way by adapting to nature...”
Carlo CraccoChef, Author, Restaurateur
Respect, adapt, exploit could also be applied to chef Carlo Cracco’s amazing public career.
Not content with trailblazing famous dishes like his deconstructed Veal Milanese, he has become a heart-throb on Italian TV where he’s starred in six seasons of MasterChef Italia (he’s known as “the handsome Masterchef judge”), four seasons of Hell’s Kitchen Italia, and been a guest judge on Netflix’s “The Final Table”.
In June 2022, Cracco will be sharing his love of travel, reminding us why Italy is one of the most beautiful countries in the world and at the forefront of the international gastronomy scene. He is inviting a small group of guests to join him on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria, known as the black pearl of the Mediterranean located between Sicily and Tunisia. This Hosted experience in partnership with Satopia Travel includes accommodation at award-winning boutique hotel Sikelia with a 4-day gastronomy experience exploring local food and wine. This is an incredible and unique opportunity to meet Cracco himself and learn from the master of modern Italian cuisine.
