“I started cooking professionally when I was 16 in an Italian restaurant and then I started traveling. I ended up living in nine different cities cooking all kinds of food while learning as much as I could from everyone I worked with.

Kitchens have changed my personality a lot, mainly by adding consistency and discipline to my daily life. What first attracted me to this line of work was the free expression, the freedom to do what came out of my heart, without having to worry about anything. I don’t agree that we have the duty to represent our nationality or be bound by it. Seeing all the different backgrounds and knowledge of cooks come together in one place to create dishes is what makes it universal and diverse.

Behind the food you eat there is much more than just the story of the cooks who dedicate their lives to mastering the craft. There is a beautiful and enormous process even before the ingredients get to us, it’s the farmer who gets up in at dawn, the delivery man who stood in the rain waiting to deliver the ingredients; it’s a massive community that wakes up daily so that we cooks can put a plate down in front of you.

I hope that one day everyone will be able to fully appreciate the amount of work that goes into each plate.”