Take the irascible celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, stick a scruffy beard on his chin, teleport him onto Italian television and you’ll likely get something like Carlo Cracco. The Veneto superstar chef has become a celebrity in Italy as the host of Masterchef and Hell’s Kitchen Italia. Like his British counterpart, the temper displayed especially on the second show is already a thing of legends.
"The first time I saw Masterchef in Australia," Cracco tells SBS Italian. "I thought, hold on, if this works here, it cannot fail in Italy."
Cracco is in Australia as a guest of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, hosting a master class focused on classic Italian cooking reinvented, a choice of field that has become his personal manifesto.
In the last few years he has grown to be the most controversial chef on Italian television. This is due in part to his penchant for verbal abuse - but he assures us that it’s just a front, and we are too scared to contradict him. Also too are infamous San Carlo ads, in which he spruiks the virtue of a well known brand of potato chips, thus attracting accusations of having 'sold out' to the commercial dark side.
But Carlo Cracco is definitely not a mere TV product. He was born in Creazzo in 1966, a little town around 100 km west of Venice and started his career ten years later in 1986, under the guidance of Gualtiero Marchesi, another household name and one of the first restaurateurs to be awarded three Michelin stars.
"Television needs to create a special allure to attract people," says Cracco. "When I did Masterchef, the most severe and tough part of me came out."
After a stint in France trained by Alain Ducasse and Lucas Carton, he came back to Italy and open Cracco Peck in 2001.
"Italians do tend to think they own the best cuisine in the world and the rest is just filler," says Cracco with a smirk. “But it’s an attitude that only people who haven’t ever put a foot outside their country have."
"Italians do tend to think they own the best cuisine in the world and the rest is just filler"
Cracco’s approach to cooking is “secular, definitely not dogmatic" - an attitude that is showing in his decision to reinvent the Italian cuisine.
His showdown with the mayor of Amatrice, a town two hours from Rome on how to properly cook the almost religiously sacred signature local dish bucatini all’Amatriciana (suggestion: don’t put garlic in it, unless you are a super-star chef or really want to feel the wrath of petulant Italians) was huge.
"You just can’t state that something is right or wrong...if people want to put pineapple on it, let them. Placed in a careful way, it could be a hit!"
His personal take on the crumbed veal cutlet Cotoletta alla Milanese (you can read more here) also earned some very strong reactions.
"You just can’t state that something is right or wrong," Cracco explains. "You have to respect the recipe and then thinking of eventually improve it. It really comes down to who does it and how.”
Is there anything that Carlo Cracco won’t do in the kitchen? we eventually ask him. What about the great Aussie classic, whose only mention fills Italian ears with horror and despair? For example, the pizza topping that recently earned the wrath of the president of Iceland: pineapple.
That one makes him stop and think, before carving an answer that is a testament to his convictions. “I’ve eaten fantastic pizzas in Australia, if people want to put pineapple on it, let them.
"Placed in a careful way, it could be a hit!"
Listen here to Carlo Cracco's full interview (in Italian) with SBS Italian below.
