The fate of women in quality catering is a strange fate. You say woman and you immediately think of the angels of the hearth, the mother-cooks and the grandmother-cooks who are always skilled in the collective imagination, custodians of secret family recipes in the kitchen that feed nostalgic memories of extraordinary childhood aromas and flavors of most of the humanity, but then go and see what happens with gender equality under the starred firmament of the Michelin Guide and discover that in Italy out of 360 stars only 10 have landed on a female chef. And just to reinforce the concept, you can try asking around, at the first chance that happens, the name of some big prestigious signature in the kitchen. Those of Cannavacciuolo, Vissani, Cracco, Barbieri will immediately materialize, all of whom have enjoyed wide media exposure (in some cases harmful) all two or one star. No one will nominate one of the ten starry female chefs, which include in this small list personalities of the caliber of Nadia Santini, who has 3 stars with the restaurant Il Pescatore in Canneto sull'Oglio (Mantova), and in 2017 entered the ranking of the 100 best chefs in the world drawn up by “Le Chef” or by Annie Féolde, the first woman to win three Michelin stars in Italy, and fourth in the world, with the Pinchiorri wine shop in Florence. In short, it must be deduced that for a woman chef the price to pay is considerable for the gastronomic culture to be further enriched by the other half of the sky, to say it with the old comrade Mao.
Small group, at the moment, but very aggressive and not at all intimidated by the male preponderance of the sector. The text is Cristina Bowerman, Michelin star of Glass Hostaria in Vicolo del Cinque in Rome, a woman with seven lives, always on the move, always ahead of the times, always attentive to grasping every novelty that presents itself in front of her, always eager to push the accelerator pedal of her gastronomic war machine and never the brake pedal . Her story is so intense that to tell it all about her several pages would be occupied, never having the certainty of having said everything, because perhaps, in her frenetic activity, she too has reset something in her memory.
In the fuchsia pink of her hair her business card: creativity and rejection of conventions
Our restless Chef was born in Cerignola, in the province of Foggia, on the heights that delimit the Basso Tavoliere of Puglia, known for being the birthplace of Giuseppe Di Vittorio, the great trade unionist who animated the peasant struggles against landowners after the Second World War and for having hosted Pietro Mascagni who composed the Cavalleria Rusticana here.
Cristina Vitulli, her real name, studies at the linguistics of Bari, in 1990 yes Bachelor's degree in law and immediately found a job at a law firm. But the impatient girl feels close to the Apulian town and in 1992 she leaves the studio and decides to take a vacation in the United States that have fascinated her since she was studying languages. She in San Francisco where she continues to devote herself to forensic studies is passionate about Graphic Design that occupies her mind for a few years, at the same time she works to support herself from Higher Ground, a coffee house in San Francisco. At some point in her existence as a Yankee, a light bulb turns on. Perhaps her life as a lawyer is not for her, and neither is her life as a graphic designer, which also gave her many artistic stimuli. Her cooking, the one that as a child she lived next to her grandmother and mother, which involved her when they prepared lunches and dinners at home, perhaps was marked in her destiny and she hadn't noticed it. The memory of those tasty cavatelli with tomato and salted ricotta cheese from the mother Cettaremained indelible. So away with codes, legal tomes, and even graphic tablets, web design programs, felt-tip pens. Everything changes. City too. And here she is in Austin, Texas following the university courses of Culinary Arts Academy and to take the second degree. Her entrance to the Driskill Grill proves to be fundamental, a real institution in the States, a luxury hotel that hosted President Lyndon B. Johnson and an adjoining adequate restaurant where Cristina further develops discipline and technique, working a lot on sharpness, definition and concentration of flavors . “There are those who do the same job for a lifetime and those who change it more than once. The moment I realized that cooking could be more than just sautéing, which was a matter of culture, tradition, creativity, I understood that it would become my profession”, she told IoDonna a few years ago, and she continued on this path. Between graphic studies, restaurants, university courses, she also finds time to marry Mr. Bowerman. Of the marriage, which will end soon, however, she will keep the surname of her American husband. With her Italian name of her, there in Texas, she feared being mistaken for a Mexican and facing racist discrimination.
She had said, when she landed in America, fascinated and bombarded with new sensations from such a rich and complex world, which made Cerignola appear so distant, that she would not return to Italy. She had also decided to open a local lei in Austin. Imagine. It was not so. Because in 2005 Cristina Vitulli now Bowerman returns to Rome and with all the experiences gained in the States which also materialize in a unsettling hair for a Chef, fuksia and white two-tone tye-dye, artfully disheveled, ("a way to rebel against conventions and express my creativity"), which represents the first business card for his interlocutors, a reminder of his stay in Austin, the favorite city of the Hippies, arrives at the Convivio dei Fratelli Troiani, Michelin star, a hotbed of creative flair. Nice experience but it doesn't last long.
The meeting with Fabio Spada and the arrival of the star
From Vicolo dei Soldati to Vicolo del Cinque, it takes fifteen minutes on foot. A year ago he opened a restaurant with modern lines that attracted his attention as a former graphic designer, Glass Hostaria, but the cuisine does not seem consistent with the format of the venue. The owner is Fabio Spada, a former theater entrepreneur. Take a professional spark, that place is a perfect container to implement all that Cristina has learned up to that moment and all that she intends to express and has not been able to do up to now. And Cristina in 2006 makes her triumphal entrance to Glass. But the spark isn't just commercial. Fabio and Cristina discover they have much more in common than running a restaurant. And their sentimental relationship is soon enriched by the arrival of a son, Luca.
Cristina and Fabio busily set to work. Glass is a reality that is very distant from the somewhat postcard image of Trastevere and from the cuisine offered in the restaurants in the area, a great challenge to focus on excellent catering in one of the streets of Trastevere's tourist nightlife. However, the public of the capital and the international one are soon conquered by his cuisine, sometimes provocative and unsettling, but always recognizable and tasty, which knows how to make a dialogue – in an interesting mix – global and local, contemporary and traditional. In 2008 the restaurant received Due Forchette in the Gambero Rosso Guide. Two years later, the Michelin star arrives which speaks of her: Cristina Bowerman always manages to amaze with her cuisine in constant balance between fusion, tradition, elegance and audacity. The undisputed protagonist of Roman restaurants in recent times, in his essential-minimalist restaurant, where an original and creative play of lights creates an enveloping, sometimes pleasantly disturbing atmosphere, get ready to taste delicacies such as buttons filled with lampascione, pecorino broth and honey, toasted hazelnuts and marrow. But you can also range between a veal heart, smoked potatoes, coffee sauce, habanero and truffle and a beef tenderloin tartare, chorizo, beetroot, celery and soy aged in Bourbon barrels. Moving on to a Sashimi of white fish, koji, buttermilk, salicornia, fermented plums and tobiko or Gnocchetti, sea urchins, bagnacauda of black garlic and salted lemon then a Lobster, English cream with lemon, fried potato disc, taralli and 'nduja. To conclude with a cherry, gorgonzola and Aleatico or Frangipane, cherries, white chocolate mayonnaise and wasabi
A versatile project from haute cuisine to food trucks
The history of Bowerman and that of the Glass restaurant become a case study at the Bocconi University in the 2010 program. From that moment, from the union between Spada's managerial skills and Cristina's gastro-marketing soul, everything is a initiatives that shake up the quiet world of Roman restaurants.
In November 2012 – from the radical renovation of a former Alfa Romeo workshop in the Prati district of Rome – Romeo Chef&Baker was born: kitchen and oven, bread and accompaniments, a rich counter with a selection of excellent products, gourmet sandwiches and coffee… a radical versatility, which tells of a restless creativity free from preconceptions. However, this experience also ended with the sale of its shares. It's still not what he wants.
In the meantime, however, the two Api Romeo were born, created in 2013 to make the proposal of the Testaccio restaurant itinerant. Among the first Italian examples of what would soon become one of the absolute trends in the field of metropolitan catering: the food truck.
An experience that will be completed in 2015 with the launch of Frigo, Il Van del Gelato, which today transports, on four wheels, all the quality of Cristina Bowerman's artisan gelato, declining it in a contemporary key, also through the creation of original products, like the new biscuit and the frozen aperitif.
In 2015 it was the turn of Romeo at Testaccio Market in Rome, an internationally inspired pop concept where Cristina Bowerman wanted to transfer her travel experiences around the world. A counter in the busiest popular market in Rome, where you can buy freshly baked bread, cold cuts, cheeses, filled sandwiches but also CUPS containing creams and soups, salads and quick take-away gourmet lunches. Next to the savory shop is the Frigo counter with ice cream in bowls, cones and on sticks.
Romeo Chef&Baker in Testaccio, the model of cuisine without borders
The latest project to see the light of day in 2017 (the last one? A risky word for the volcanic Cerignolese-American-Roman chef) is Romeo Chef&Baker (the name he brought with him from Prati), in the Testaccio district of Rome in Piazza dell'Emporio, more than two thousand square meters of restaurant, bakery, gastronomy, Frigo ice cream parlor which also includes the Giulietta pizzeria, inaugurated by the Salvo Brothers, master pizza makers, a real Neapolitan institution. Two thousand square meters can frighten anyone, not the Spada-Bowerman duo who wanted to try their hand at a new format that could merge restaurant, pizzeria, bakery, gastronomy, cocktail bar and ice cream shop, creating a synthesis between street food and haute cuisine, traditional Italian cuisine and a model of cuisine without borders. In short, a realm of “pop food”. "Romeo's cuisine - he likes to say - is a cuisine that winks at tradition, which enhances the Italian raw material and which tends to be round, full but without falling into the "too much" that can sometimes be found in the Roman tradition ”.
A recurring phrase in his interviews tries to define well his frenetic world always striving for innovation and change: You must never save money! You must dive in without hesitation whenever an adventure or opportunity presents itself. In the awareness that around the corner of every adventure there is always the possibility of failure. But that shouldn't affect us. I don't accept the word failure as a concept, I turn the concept upside down: a failure is an experience that can help us build something new, and therefore has a positive connotation.
Instinct and rules to be overcome with passion and heart
For her, work is an amalgam of instinct and rules, the first must always be listened to, the second must always be overcome to take another step further, with courage and the desire to dare but discipline, courage and a balance must reign over everything which requires a lot of clarity. And that's what she always repeats to her brigade of collaborators. She talks about it with affection: “I'm actually worse than me. Passion and heart are the main elements of their journey. I consider them people I work with, not people who work for me. A relationship which, although it keeps the hierarchical relationship intact, sees sincere human relationships based on esteem and mutual respect grow, almost always".
By the way, in all this hubbub of initiatives, businesses, experiences that move as if blended by a blender going full steam ahead, Cristina Bowerman has found and also finds the time to be Chef Ambassador of Expo Milano 2015, to participate in the ACTION campaign AID, to be part of the ten founders of the Fiorano For Kids organization, to raise funds in favor of research into specific diets in the treatment of childhood epilepsy, to join the commission for the creation of the Food Act, the pact between institutions and the world of quality Italian cuisine, at the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, to be nominated by the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Tourism Ambassador of the Telefono Rosa Association, and member of the Technical Coordination Committee for the Year of Italian Food 2018, And since she had some time left over from last March, she was appointed member of the Steering Committee of the degree course in Enogastronomic Sciences and Cultures at the University of Rome. Let's leave out prizes and awards that you can well imagine.
To conclude, going back to the beginning, we can ask ourselves a question: can anyone think of seeing her frightened, intimidated, blocked by the fact of moving in a world dominated by male Chefs?
Glass Hostaria
Vicolo de' Cinque, 58, 00153 Rome
Phone: 06 5833 5903
https://glasshostaria.it/
Romeo Chef & Baker
Piazza dell'Emporio, 28, 00153 Rome RM
Phone: 06 3211 0120
https://romeo.roma.it/
