Tag: Cracco

Backstage with Carlo Cracco for the October issue – Italian Cuisine

The backstage of the photo shoot for the October cover with Carlo Cracco: here is the TOILETPAPER video

Today, October 3, our new issue arrives on newsstands: this time it is Carlo Cracco to become editor of our magazine for a month, to promote with us the candidacy of the Italian culinary tradition as an intangible heritage of humanity to UNESCO.

On the cover we see the chef with an egg to act as his "clown nose": the idea is Toiletpaper, the team formed by Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari is Micol Tarsus. Because? To celebrate Cracco's passion for egg and Cattelan's for irony and lightness.

"For this issue, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan has become the editorial office and we have done crazy things and a little rock, like Carlo who seems cold and all in one piece, even a little grumpy, and then agrees to be photographed with a strip of mayonnaise on his face (this photo is not in the magazine, but you will see it soon on social networks). Or with an iron in your hand and a fried egg on top …
To shoot the images there was Toiletpaper with a Maurizio Cattelan intent on blow drying the chef's hair after the cut and adjusted by Shinichi Morita, Micol Talso, the art director of the team, who decided how to break the egg on the nose by Carlo … which then became the cover. In short, many moments of very light joy, a wonderful antidote to the difficulties of this period ", he says Maddalena Fossati, Director of La Cucina Italiana.

Cracco director of La Cucina Italiana backstage – Italian Cuisine

Cracco editor for a month of our beloved magazine. With a lot, a lot, of self-irony.

I assure you: when I entered our studios and saw Maurizio Cattelan, in person, who shot the cover of the month of October with Carlo Cracco intent on "ironing" an egg, I said to myself: maybe we really get there at Unesco. A September afternoon: music on set, joyful atmosphere despite Covid restrictions and masks. Cattelan takes it off to photograph because we are few and all at a distance. And then, to get in tune, he cuts out an old (terrible) image of Cracco when he went to the hotel (it is true that some men improve with age) and sticks it on his T-shirt with adhesive tape.

We joked with the mayonnaise, with Carlo Cracco (extremely available) who sprinkled his face like a moisturizer. You can see the photo here and only here for now, then on social media because it is not in the magazine. The pinnacle: if you think that the egg on the chef's nose is a Photoshop effect … nein! Cattelan cut out Carlo's face, and then broke a real egg on it. At the end of the day I found Carlo's photo on my back without even realizing it!

Achille Lauro dinner at Cracco in the Gallery – Italian Cuisine

A meeting with a special customer reveals the personality of Italy's favorite and most criticized chef

For the first time Achille Lauro becomes a food critic. When Carlo said he wanted the Rude and Rolls Royce singer to judge his menu, I was a little perplexed. And I was also very curious to see the look with which he would come to the restaurant. So? Very chic, jacket and trousers with a tuxedo shirt. Then I had read on Wikipedia that he prefers to be called by his real name Lauro, and not Achille who is artistic. Obviously Carlo called him Achille all evening! Very good at the comments on dinner even if by Lauro's own admission (yes, Lauro), his family that extends from Rovereto to Puglia has a series of crazy cooks from whom he learned the art of sitting at the table. Minus that of cooking himself. Humility, kindness, elegance, competence. A fairytale dinner with Achille Lauro and with a Cracco in great shape.

The report of this meeting – at the table – is on page 99 of the October issue