The chef Max Mariola He has 9 million followers between TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and a restaurant in the Brera area of Milan that bears his name
The sound of love
Max Mariola has 9 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. All passionate about his culinary art. And of “the sound of love», or the sound of pasta when it is stirred. Even as a boy, Max knew that his future would be in the kitchen. «Already at 14 I wanted to be a chef», he says in an interview with Corriere della Sera. But life had other plans for him, at least temporarily. «MAfter middle school, my father forced me to follow in his footsteps. And so I worked for years in our company, a historic workshop for the restoration of precious metal objects». When he was 22 his father died, and this convinced him to change his life.
The beginnings
The first job was humble: «I was cleaning a kitchen. Free. I hadn’t worked as a hotelier, I wanted to catch up: some wonderful people taught me a lot, but without a salary. It wasn’t easy: dad had left us no debts, but no money either. But I think it was important to start from the bottom: to manage a kitchen you have to know it. And only those who know how to obey also know how to command. Then I attended a private cooking school. At that point I had a salary, I paid it like this: in the evening I worked the restaurant shift, during the day the courses». Then he ended up in front of a camera: «Non 1999 a teacher from the cooking school called me and said: we are making a food TV channel, would you like to be my assistant? At first I was just behind the scenes, then I started doing my own columns. I did TV for 22 years: that’s a long timethe”.
Air of change
The real change happened with social media. «In 2018 we started making videos, shot by my wife, for Facebook and YouTube: we were successful and we jumped in. Then in 2022 there was a collapse in views on horizontal videos: everything had moved to vertical. And there I said: what do I do? Do I go on TikTok?». The answer is now known, and it has the «sound of love» (the sound of pasta when it is creamed: «Erotic, like many things in the kitchen»).
Food prices according to Mariola
Mariola also states that «L‘Italy should aim to become the haute couture of food: maintaining current production and quantities, but raising prices. As Hermès does, which in fact has a waiting list for Birkins: it increases prices, not the circulation». Even if this way prices will increase: «Ordinary people need to understand that you don’t have to buy salmon, mackerel is fine. And you shouldn’t buy asparagus in December, but broccoli. At Christmas you can find cherries from Chile: they cost who knows how much and they are not sustainable! To those who buy them, and maybe even have an eco-friendly shopping bag, I would like to hit them on the handsthe».
