Calling him stubborn is an understatement. Don't let yourself be deceived by his good-natured and smiling, almost easy-going appearance. Actually Antonio Cuomo, thirty-eight years old chef of the Hostaria restaurant of the Relais San Lorenzo, a boutique hotel affiliated with Small Reading, within the walls of the XNUMXth century Venetian Walls surrounding upper Bergamo, is a more than specific type. His father soon noticed. The boy already at 11 he knew his stuff. His father, a cook on cruise ships, always traveling around the world, had set up a Banqueting business and like all fathers in the world, for his son, he envisaged a future of studies and accommodation in some office, in some company, or in short as a freelancer in something that should have ensured his well-being without paying the high prices that he had had to pay with exhausting hours and constant tensions. But that world fascinated him so much to Antonio and he didn't listen to us very much from that ear. And at 12 he was able to hold his grudges at his father because he didn't take him with him in the small business that he had put on him, with not a few sacrifices, to stay in the middle of the food. When the time came to have to choose which course of study he had to choose in order to start a satisfying and paid job, Antonio tried to tell his father that he saw his future in front of the stove and not sitting at a desk. Open heavens, his father Gaetano was very irritated, he didn't even want to discuss this: "My father - Antonio recalls today - was very angry, he said to me the usual things you hear from someone who has done a strenuous job, like a good father he wanted to protect me he wanted to give me a better future than his who had begun to cook when kitchens were loaded with coal and kitchen brigades were seen as a military regime. Above all, he wanted to avoid the sacrifices of a job made up of privations, always far from loved ones and relatives, always under stress ”.
Antonio is an obedient boy (in principle) and submits (apparently) to the pressure of his father who wants to send him to a technical institute. But that call from the stove is stronger than his obedience to his father's wishes. Ever since the world began, in family life, there is always a mother who is willing to do anything to comply with the wishes of her children and Antonio desperately calls her to help. And since children "so piezz 'e core", as Eduardo De Filippo taught us in Filumena Marturano, mother Concilia, behind father Gaetano, enrolled the young Antonio in theHotel management institute of Castellammare di Stabia. Needless to say the uproar that arose in the family when the father found out about it. Quarrels, discussions, long faces, but the road was now open. Antonio "capatosta", as people like him are defined in Naples, was already Chef. He stubbornly resisted everything, even the extreme attempt that his father made to induce him to change his studies: “that hotel management institute – Gaetano kept repeating – would at best have made him a waiter or a kitchen worker. The future he expected for that son was quite another”. And to make him understand what awaited him, when summer arrived he forced him to work as an unpaid intern in the hotel where they went on vacation. It was tough, the young Antonio saw his friends and relatives going to the beach and he nailed to work instead. Unfortunately for Mr. Cuomo, what should have been an apparent punishment entrenched his son more and more in his decisions.
There was no hesitation or regret. “When you want something in life you have to be strong” is a phrase that Antonio still repeats endlessly today. Moral: the boy had his first period of work at just 14 years old. But the pinnacle of happiness touched him the following year when the owner of the hotel, satisfied with the passion and commitment shown at work, called him back for another period. At this point even the father had to raise the white flag against a leader like him with whom there was nothing to do. He understood that cooking would represent happiness for his son and realized that at the same time Antonio, with that character, would certainly have succeeded in his projects and would have been lucky. And he began to be generous with advice and suggestions, based on his experiences, to help him grow. And when Antonio arrived to win the diploma he called him aside: "now if you want to become good you have to get away from my clutches and you have to travel to get to know, gain experience". This time, however, it is Antonio who is disappointed because in the meantime he had conquered an important role in the company which was accredited for the level of its catering with a large number of customers. "Only today that I am a father, too, Antonio admits – I understood his message, right or wrong, it was a great life lesson for me". And so at the age of 18 the boy began to travel around Italy and also went abroad. He watches, observes, studies on his days off, goes to English school every afternoon, reads books and magazines to no end.
He wants to grow, forge ahead, but he doesn't bind himself to anyone, because he wants to show his father that he can grow up with the pride of not having had any help and having done everything by himself. And stubbornly he boasts of not having apprenticed with starred chefs because the results have to come from his head. It is his father who urges him to go to work in restaurants at hotels, because – he explains to him – in hotel catering, which engages the whole day from breakfasts, to dinners, to events, one gains a whole experience field and very educational. Antonio begins to send curriculum vitae throughout Italy. There is always the proud desire to grow up, to demonstrate to the father that by working hard one can build one's own original path. He finds his first job at the Hotel Villa Cora in Florence, then it's the turn of Machiavelli, another five-star also in Florence, then he goes to Greece at the Hotel Peninsula in Heraklion.
And in 1996 at a very young age, the first dish that bears his signature: a citrus-scented risotto. At that time certain combinations were not as widespread as today. A bold combination that reflects the intimate personality of Antonio, determined, fussy to excess, but also attracted by uncommon combinations, with a passion for combining tradition and modernity because, as he always loves to say, his cuisine is a modern and creative cuisine that can remember.
Certainly some presences in his life have been important: such as the collaboration with Joia in Milan where Pietro Leeman's vegan cuisine has been taken to the highest level gaining international recognition or that with Gianluca Fusto refined Milanese pastry chef who teaches haute patisserie in Italy and all over the world, or the one with Davide Scabin who from his Combal.0 always manages to amaze with his original imagination.
It is in Bergamo after so much touring that Antonio Cuomo puts up the tent. The city attracts him, the refined atmosphere of other times, the proximity to a countryside and a mountain full of food and wine jewels. The first impact is with the Hotel Excelsior San Marco as head of the game. Then move on to the Hotel Cappello d'oro, under the guidance of chef Norberto Maffioli. In 2008 he was chef at the Hotel Settecento. His most prestigious landing was finally in 2013 at the Hostaria del Relais San Lorenzo, the only five-star hotel in Bergamo. His fussiness, his rigor bind him to four hands to the city making him even lose any Neapolitan inflection (rare case).
In the restaurant located in a unique and suggestive setting, in the basement, among Roman, medieval, Renaissance and eighteenth-century archaeological finds, the Neapolitan-Nordic Antonio Cuomo creates a synthesis of all the experiences made in the past, marries tradition with modernity, launches into futuristic creations, marries meat cuisine but also vegan cuisine. He is also a pastry chef (his great passion) from which it is clear with what determination he is building his future. And he's not afraid of confrontations. The owners of the hotel decide to organize international evenings by gradually inviting great international chefs to cook at the Hostaria over the course of the year. Bernd Knoller from Riff in Valencia, Joao Rodrigues from Feitoria in Lisbon, Domenico Iavarone from José in Torre del Greco, Terry Giacomello from Inkiostro in Parma and Andrea Bertarini from Conca Bella in Vacallo, Switzerland are arriving. And yet the Swedish Titti Qvarnstrom, dell'Allium. And again the Belgian Michael Vrijmoed from Gent and Sven Erik Renaa from Renaa in Stavanger, Norway. And Antonio talks, discusses, exchanges experiences, discovers products and cooking methods with everyone.
His menus? Well in Come una Tartare, he enjoys provoking by making a charcoal beetroot tartare, seasoned with red onion, capers, cashew nut emulsion and smoked paprika. And moving on to the first courses, you can try his Mealitaly selection durum wheat spaghettoni creamed with burnt onion, Greek yoghurt brewer's yeast powder and raspberry vinegar scent or an unusual pasta beans and apricots made with Zitoni au gratin with bean purée , dried apricots and salted macadamia nuts. But moving on to the main courses, they range from Milanese-style veal sweetbreads, with creamed potatoes, their puffed peel and sweet and sour black garlic sauce, to a Presa of Iberian pork with beetroot emulsion, blueberries, seared fresh spinach and mushroom powder porcini mushrooms or a grilled Piedmontese Fassona Sirloin with raw carrots and cumin, scapece sauce, black olive charcoal and whiskey gel. A miscellaneous of flavours, aromas and cultures that obey a creative and innovative concept of a cuisine that wants to discover and make people discover new gustatory territories. With one goal: to make the dream of all gourmet cooks come true, place the Michelin star (or stars) on your restaurant. “Fortunately I am lucky enough to work in a magical location. And I would like to close the circle with the above!
