Gennaro Contaldo
This is the man who taught Italian cooking to Tim Mälzer and Jamie Oliver
“Lemons are part of me, my childhood and my culture,” says Gennaro Contaldo
©David Loftus
At the end of the 90s, Tim Mälzer and Jamie Oliver were young, wild, but still completely unknown. Then she took Gennaro Contaldo under his wing. The story of a love triangle for life.
Tim Mälzer has been flirting with the idea of being the best Italian chef outside of Italy for years. With a wink of course. But the hamburger’s love of Italian Nonna cuisine is no joke. This is his heart’s kitchen, it is where he thrives. In the meantime, he has sufficiently proven that he masters them. But he didn’t learn that during his training at the Hotel Intercontinental in Hamburg. Nor at the Ritz in London. He learned that from an Italian who, although not a big name at the time, had an incomparable passion for taste. With a man Matthew Norman once wrote about in the “Sunday Telegraph” who “cooks like an angel – and no ordinary angel” – Gennaro Contaldo. The Gennaro Contaldo who once took Jamie Oliver by the hand.
Gennaro Contaldo grew up in the very west of Italy, where the houses climb the mountains to escape the surging sea, just a stone’s throw from Amalfi and Ravello. It was in the coastal town of Minori that he, who had just been born into his 40’s, fell in love with the local cuisine and local produce. The taste of the Amalfi Coast, the “cucina amalfitana”, is still the central theme of his cuisine today.
It is said that Contaldo was already helping out in the village restaurants at the age of eight – and thus set the course for the future. At the end of the 1960s he dared to jump across the water to the British Isles. A few years of fuzziness followed before Contaldo found his way back to the stove and cooked his way through London kitchens. Antonio Carluccio’s “Neal Street Restaurant” was to become the place where he suddenly found himself surrounded by youngsters Jamie Oliver and Tim Mälzer in the mid-90s. He should become her mentor.
Mälzer, Oliver, Contaldo – an adopted family
In the fifth season of the cooking show “Kitchen Impossible”, Gennaro Contaldo appeared as the original chef and gave an emotional insight into the time together. “A lot of people think they owe their success to me. It’s not like that. They’re both born talents and I just let them do their thing,” he said. Both are very intelligent, willing to work hard, very funny and sensitive boys. “I was the happiest man in the world because I got to share the fun and love with them.” For Mälzer and Oliver, the time at Contaldo’s side was a stage at the beginning of their careers, but they also became an elective affinity. “I always say I have seven kids. Five of my own, and number six and seven are Tim and Jamie,” Contaldo summarized. Mälzer was visibly touched by these words. This time, he said, was unique, “and one of the reasons why I love this job so much”.
During this time, as Mälzer recently said in the podcast “Johann Lafer & Friends”, he “found his soul”. At that time, the Neal was not a restaurant with any reputation. They would have cooked for the British royal family, but it was actually relatively simple. “We fried sole, a little olive tapenade, smoked ricotta gnocchi without sauce. Very banal, very simple – but with Gennaro Contaldo’s passion for taste. I’ve never seen anyone cook with such passion and taste.”
Back to the roots
In 1999 Contaldo opened his first own restaurant “Passione”, which enjoyed a reputation like Donnerhall, but has since closed again. He also swapped the stove for the television more and more frequently. He later became known to a wider audience, especially in the wake of his former protégé Jamie Oliver, who quickly became the rebellious poster boy of the culinary world in Great Britain in the early 2000s. On the other hand through the BBC series “Two Greedy Italians” (roughly: two greedy Italians), which he moderated together with his former boss Carluccio. In addition, Contaldo regularly publishes cookbooks, or: Bestsellers. His latest work is an ode to the lemon – and to his homeland.
He still starts every day with a lemon – “well, with a bit of lemon zest in my morning espresso,” he writes in the introduction to “Gennaros Limoni: Italian cooking and baking with lemons“. You could say he was raised on lemons, he says. There were always some in the house. “Lemons are part of me, my childhood and my culture,” he says. For the new book, the 73- year old returned to his roots, strolled through the lemon groves, collected recipes and learned how to prepare limoncello and candied lemons. The book is dedicated to his friends and family back home. It is also a declaration of love to the Amalfi kitchen, the kitchen in other words , which once shaped his cooking style – and that of Mälzer and Oliver.
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