Talking Italian

Giorgio Locatelli is a Michelin-starred restaurateur who cooks for the rich and famous. But he’s much more interested in the farmers and artisans who supply him. And please don’t call him a celebrity chef, he says. Pendle Harte meets him

Giorgio Locatelli is quite cross. “It’s ridiculous,” he keeps saying. “This culture is completely wrong. Food has become a big business that makes a lot of money for people sitting in offices in the city.” We are sitting in his beautiful Michelin-starred restaurant, Locanda Locatelli, and he is shaking his head in disgust. Although his restaurant is fully booked a month ahead by people like Madonna and you’d think he’d be delighted, lots of things make Giorgio cross. He’s angry in a sort of ranty, Bob Geldof-style way (the Geldof comparison is also a physical one – similar hair and a similar way of shaking it around in a kind of angry despair). It’s the food industry that makes him cross. “I want my food to be right for humanity,” he labours. “Right for the people that produce it and for the people that eat it.”
Because the world of gastronomy is not known for its fairness. A stint in Paris working at a restaurant that paid Giorgio the menu price of a portion of spinach for a day’s work left him resolute about the inequity of the labour market and determined to prove that things can be different. “It’s just not true that you have to take every drop of blood from the people who work for you to make money. To apply market law to our business is a disaster for everyone because the only one who makes money is the fat bastard who sits in the office in the city. And until we do something about this and put these people out of joint and deal with our food in a proper way we will all lose.” Chefs are notoriously overworked and underpaid, though not in Giorgio’s W1 kitchen. As we talk, his staff are quietly polishing countless shiny surfaces around us – there’s no shouting and no sense of panic. “As you can see, the people here aren’t stressed, they’re all working very gently as a team because I treat them well and feed them properly.” According to Giorgio there are Michelin-starred eateries that feed their staff popcorn. “Here, all my staff eat from the menu.”
Giorgio was born in the hotel restaurant built by his grandfather and from the age of six he spent most of his time in the kitchen. In 1985 he came to London to work at the Savoy, where the food was classically French and “unbelievably fantastic”. He moved around various restaurants, winning a star at Zafferano and four years ago he opened Locanda Locatelli, which he owns and runs together with his wife Plaxy. Now he is on a mission – like everyone who cares about food – to improve the way food is produced and distributed. The supermarkets, obviously, are a main enemy, as is an industry that favours only certain cuts of meat and continues to import unseasonal vegetables from across the globe. These are sentiments shared by most of his high-profile chef peers, though he’s not afraid to criticise their methods. “I am independent and it’s a great position to be in. I can say anything I want and I don’t really have to suck up to anybody.” And he certainly won’t. He’s got no time for Jamie Oliver for one, as long as he’s on Sainsbury’s payroll. “He says that the only way to change things is from within but I don’t think that in the last 10 years they’ve come in any way close to helping the producers. 98 per cent of people who pick cocoa beans
have never tasted a chocolate bar.It’s ridiculous. Every time you pick up a chocolate bar by Nestle you are enslaving people. This is a fact. I buy everything direct from the producers and I only import things that make sense to import, like parmesan or Parma ham. There’s no point flying in pumpkins.”
It’s all very well paying higher prices for organic food with infallible traceability when you’re selling it to people with pockets as deep as Madonna’s but how can anybody else do it? “We are not an expensive restaurant for the quality you get. You can go to any restaurant and have grilled chicken breast. They’ll have paid 58p for it and charge you £12; I pay £7 for my chicken and charge £17 so I make less money than they do. At the turn of the century we would spend 45 per cent of our income on food and now it’s six or seven per cent, which is a losing situation for everyone involved. I’m prepared to pay a higher price so that the money goes straight to the people who make it.” Prince Charles is one of his heroes. “He’s 20 years ahead of everyone in terms of food production – his company Duchy has shown that organic food can be profitable for the land and the people who work it. I know farmers in Italy who have pictures of Prince Charles on their walls.” Also, Giorgio will buy a whole cow and use all of it. “The chef has to have some dexterity because there isn’t a fillet steak for everybody. It’s just not sustainable. We have to use the legs and the shoulders too – it’s the job of the chef to stand up and not only serve steak, even if people are prepared to pay £40 for it.”
Food on television is another thing that gets Giorgio cross. “Everything has become a competition. Food cannot be a competition. It’s impossible. Look at Ready Steady Cook. I hate that. There’s nothing I can cook that takes 20 minutes and I’m proud that everything takes longer.” Anyway, a kitchen has no place on television in Giorgio’s world. “It’s a very cheap way to make TV. A David Attenborough documentary costs £75,000 a minute and what does it cost to put a camera in a kitchen? About £13,000 for half an hour. We want to see proper documentaries, not some rubbish where someone goes to a bloody pub in the countryside and insults someone for three weeks. That’s a ridiculous way to make TV.” He’s not at all keen on chefs as personalities, or on celebrities at all. “Fanny Craddock was OK – it was very basic but at least the message was about food but now the message
is all ‘I’m a chef and I want to be a big star’. If you’re a chef and you run a restaurant and it’s good, you can live well but I guess if you’re a failure then you have to do TV.” Scathing stuff. So can we assume that Gordon Ramsay’s no great friend? “He’s a very good friend of mine! We discuss this every time we’re together! It sounds like I’m bitter but I’m not.” Giorgio has a strong belief that chefs have a big responsibility to food producers and the public to educate and provide ethical edibles and he won’t enter into the whole kitchen-as-theatre thing at all. Chefs are not entertainers or personalities, they’re chefs, he says. Though he doesn’t object to doing television per se, and is planning to do more in the future, as long as it’s about food and not about him. “The whole celebrity thing is ridiculous. Paris Hilton! Pah,” he spits.
Giorgio’s wife Plaxy, who is in charge of front of house, is hovering during this TV tirade. There’s a problem in the kitchen and Giorgio is needed immediately. Lunch is about to happen and the restaurant’s morning hush is soon to be shattered. But first there’s the small kitchen problem to
be solved. “Don’t worry,” says Giorgio as he takes me to the door. He’s charming and calm, not at all dramatic in the face of a potential kitchen crisis. Not what the television people would want at all. But he doesn’t care about what the television people want – Giorgio cares about lunch and the people who make it. Now there’s food for thought.