Giorgione: «I used to be a vet, I turned down a 70,000 euro commercial. Cultured meat and insects should be eaten”

«Be famous? It’s a responsibility. Sometimes it’s even disturbing.” It’s still. «Food sovereignty? A stupidity like all sovereignisms.” Italians at the table? “We often eat the same things and we do it with sadness.” Sixty-seven years old, real Roman, Giorgio Barchiesifor everyone “Giorgione» will be one of the stars of Macfrut in Rimini, the scheduled international showcase of the fruit and vegetable sector from 8 to 10 May in the Romagna city. The protagonist of «Giorgione: Garden and Kitchen» landed on Red shrimp Channel, will be under the spotlight at the stand of San Lindano, a sector company, for one show cooking scheduled for the late morning of 8 and 9 May: «We will cheer up the people», he jokes in the meantime and the opportunity is good to be told who Giorgione is and from where his story begins, starting from the fame gained in recent years.

Giorgione, star on TV and star on social media, from Instagram to Facebook. you are followed and known by many generations, almost from 5 to 90 years old, you might say. Are you aware of it?
«I am aware of the fact that it is a big responsibility. Indeed, sometimes disturbing. I never studied communications and sixteen years ago I wouldn’t have bet a cent on the life I’m living now. And above all I don’t want to be an influencer, I don’t sell anything except myself. Once a brand of mineral water offered me 70 thousand euros to insert a commercial at the end of a video in which I said that this water helped you digest. But I declined. Having said that, success came by chance. Sixteen years ago I opened the restaurant by chance. I had a party at home with friends and friends of mutual friends. Some of them had a small restaurant in a small village in Montefalco, Umbria: a light bulb went on in my head, they wanted to give it up and so I took it over. And I bought it for very little money. I wasn’t a chef but I had always cooked, food was conviviality, not just eating good food.”

In all your formats, television or otherwise, you have fun and entertain, do you admit?
«Diet is healthy when it is not boring. People often eat the same things at home and do so sadly. To realize this, just go to the pharmacy: rows and rows of supplements that seem to tell you: “If you’ve sweated, buy this, if you’ve run, buy that other one, if you’re depressed, there’s this other one”. I reply: “Eat everything, you don’t need anything”. If you’re healthy it means you’ve removed it and if you’re sick it’s better to take a real drug and not a supplement. Another thing, today at the table we no longer talk, we eat and we don’t chat but watch television which continuously provides instructions: like the diet which for me is a break between one meal and another.”

A program in which she was the protagonist was «Essere Giorgione», also on the Gambero Rosso channels. What was Giorgione like before becoming Giorgione?
«I was convivial, I liked being around people. And I liked being the center of attention also because I liked myself a lot. Other than alcohol and drugs, I was lucid and conscious enough to like myself as I was. I worked as an agricultural vet in a company for 20 years: knowledge of the raw material is fundamental. I remember the estrogen scandal that engulfed Plasmon. Calves fattened with estrogen with many repercussions on the health of children (due to the baby food that was produced with that meat, ed). Well, it was the beginning of the 1980s, meat was no longer sold: sales had paralysed. I worked as a veterinarian in the company, there were many animals to sell in a period of crisis: we invented a cooperative and created the first packages of “ready to cook” meat. I put on my butcher’s coat and started selling meat, after taking off my vet’s coat. We earned a good reputation especially in Rome.”

By the way, you are a Roman from Rome, as you often say for seven generations. Yet there is a thread that ties it to the Pusteria Valley. Which?
«We had a chalet in Courmayeur, which became the home of the sweet life that my father didn’t adore. My aunt, my father’s sister, lived in Val Pusteria. She said that, on the contrary, there was no one there. My father and mother went to visit her in Villabassa and we have always simply gone there. Even my children are passionate about it.”

What are your first memories in the kitchen?
«The days in Val Pusteria: I became fond of goulash, stews, Central European cuisine. In the house in Val Pusteria, there was Tata Marianna: she was a woman who had the ability to teach you without being too tender, she was a very rude woman but at the same time of infinite sweetness. I remember the preparation of the apfel strudel: nothing more than a rolling pin. With her wrists, forearms and hands she rolled out a perfect square meter of pastry. I was a child of five or six years old and for me it was magic. And to be honest, it’s not just apple strudel that exists. Strudel is stuffed pasta, and it’s not just apple strudel. A passion, this magic, the idea of ​​a primary product then transformed into food intrigued me a lot.”

In an era in which restaurants “expensive” and starred kitchens offer dizzying menus, you have remained humble when it comes to prices. Do you want to free yourself from a certain idea of ​​the food market?
«Thirty-six euros excluding drinks, and there’s a reason: here you can find tripe, tongue, nerves, lampredotto. And then cheeses and about forty products that you can nibble on. And then two first courses, two second courses, two side dishes and a trio of desserts. Be careful, you eat what we say: what arrives is unquestionable and there is no negotiation. You can’t choose. We don’t do portions but we bring trays and if the quantity isn’t enough it’s not a problem, because we increase. I would say that the reasons for not skyrocketing prices are all here. Premise: we decide everything but certainly for those who suffer from food intolerances, for many types of intolerance, we have special lines to please everyone and not make anyone feel bad.”

What do you think of young people and this presumed lack of desire to work in the restaurant industry? Have you hired young helpers?
«I give everyone a chance: I hire them properly, I pay them and I give them trust. Young people don’t want to work? It’s natural that it takes passion and a desire for money, these guys have to spend their weekends serving people who come to the place where they work to have fun. And already an obvious sacrifice. If you have passion but work in a place where they bully you, something is wrong. Then maybe once you have reached a secure position you end up bullying those below you. But I believe that in creating these conditions there is a responsibility of this “show kitchen”, this continuous show in which sometimes the tones are a little violent and unscrupulous”.

For many of me, his style is anything but bourgeois. Yet he often claims “bourgeois” origins. Can we say that appearances are deceiving?
«I cannot deny my bourgeois origins. An enlightened bourgeoisie. At 14 my mother, a Montessori pedagogue, told me to approach things with curiosity and not with distrust, without putting up barriers especially with diversity but go with the emotions you feel. She said I would realize that different things aren’t that different. At home we had servants but we, six children, had to prepare breakfast ourselves, we had to make our beds etc. And our father told us that we had received too much from life and that if we wanted more, we would have to go to work to earn it. In this spirit I bought a Morini motorbike to go to Val Pusteria, my brother went away with another Morini and disappeared for weeks, we didn’t know where he had gone until we received a postcard from Morocco with the writing “With the Morini go wherever you want.”

Do you remember any differences in views with your parents?
«Of course my father wanted me to go to high school, I went to agricultural institute. Then I enrolled in veterinary school. My wife was also a farmer. We have been together since 1975 and married since 1981.”

You can tell by looking at his programs that he has toured Italy. And what relationship does it have with the world?
«I love riding a motorbike and my wife loves it too. We toured Europe together, but I also went to South America. Let’s say I’ve done my rounds. Foreign cuisine? Everywhere I went I found the crap and the good stuff. Of course, in Argentina I was surprised and not only there: I didn’t find this “wonderful Argentine meat”. In France they put kilos of butter in snails. What to say?”.

You are a defender of our culinary tradition, which, as mentioned, you know well. What do you think of “food sovereignty”?
«It’s nonsense that plays to a certain type of sovereignty. Which should be demonized anyway, as far as I’m concerned. We are surrounded by sovereignism and the seed of sovereignism is disturbing but it finds fertile ground to germinate.”

And what idea did you have of the dualisms “meat not meat”, “insects or not insects”? Would you cook “synthetic” meat?
«People are starving and when people are starving we need to get as much food out as possible. Synthetic meat? It’s not synthetic. Synthetic meat is a hoax. It comes from a transformation in the laboratory, but it still comes from animal cells. Who tells us that this meat can’t be good? Furthermore, it would be produced without polluting. And the same thing goes for insects. Why say “no” a priori? I repeat, let’s remember that there are people dying of hunger, that food is a serious matter, that in times of war we ate rats.”

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May 7, 2024 (modified May 7, 2024 | 12:21)

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