It's not often that you meet a chef with rasta pigtails on his head and Bermuda shorts under his uniform. But the Turin Marcello Trentini, often known as Magorabin (from the name of his local), could not be that way. You understand it when its loose talk brings you over the years of an irreverent and light-hearted youth or among the thousand experiences lived in kitchens all over the world without ever taking itself too seriously. So much so that, if you did not have that developed and stubborn pellet for the culinary art, you could imagine it, instead of driving a starred restaurant, in some New Age Indian community. And you would be wrong, because under the whimsical and anarchic nature of Magorabin there is something else.
He tried this by opening a room with his own strength, together with his wife Simona, when he was just over 30 years old. There he planned to propose simple, well-cooked dishes first and then, gradually, to introduce increasingly original, interesting and complex proposals. Like the duck from the Marengo that he cooked for us: completely inspired by the famous chicken of Napoleon's chef, he knows how to combine the Piedmontese ability to bring together ingredients that are apparently incompatible with French and international haute cuisine techniques.
Said and done, the determination led him exactly where he wanted to go, that is to run only his creations and to conquer in a few years the major guides, the highly coveted qualification of JRE and finally the Michelin star. "Stuff that makes you shake your wrists", he says with the usual impetuousness of a former student with little model that today fascinates the auditorium of the hotel of Stresa with brilliant lessons on improvisation and re-use. "But certainly not enough to make me stop wanting the second".
The Magorabin restaurant in corso San Maurizio 61, in Turin. A few weeks ago the restaurant was "doubled" from 120 200 square meters, while the seats, that they were about twenty, they became 40. Among the interesting news, also the presence of a "Social Table" where 8 people at a time, even without knowing each other, can taste a special menu designed specifically for them.
He became a member of the Jeunes restaurateurs in 2008, at the age of 37, today Trentini fulfills the task with satisfaction of their vice president. And speaking of this association confesses: "A few years later I won the Michelin star, but being admitted among the JRE was the most exciting recognition of my career. At that precise moment I felt I was starting to play in the championship of the great ".
texts by Daniela Falsitta
video (below) Diego Stadiotti
on Sale & Pepe magazine
October 2018
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