Stephen Interviews:
Giuliano Bugialli
His Website

Giuliano Bugialli is renowned as Italy’s foremost cooking teacher and authority on Italian food. Bugialli comes from a prominent Florentine family and learned his craft and love of Italian Cuisine at home as a little boy; it seems the only one in his family who could not cook was his mother and he dedicated his first cookbook to her. Bugialli grew up in war torn Italy in a Jewish neighborhood and had the pleasure of experiencing both Jewish and Italian cuisine. He started his own cooking school in 1972 (Cooking In Florence) in a fifteenth century villa outside of Florence and it is here that many students learned the art of
cooking, including restauranteur and author Mary Ann Esposito. His sense of humor is dry and clever and his smile infectious. He is currently working on his ninth cookbook and makes his home in New York with his partner Henry who is a composer and conductor. They live right around the corner from Beekman Place, the home of “Auntie Mame”—something they both find most amusing.

SV: Why did you leave Florence for the States?
GB: In 1973 I was invited to come to the United States to teach Italian by someone who chaired the language department at a school in New York, and shortly thereafter I was cooking fulltime. Since then I have split my year mainly between Italy and the U.S.

SV: Where did you receive your training?
GB: In Florence, where the cooking tradition is passed down within the family. When I was a child, we had two cooks, but my father, grandmother and two aunts directed the cooking. I observed everything with an eagle-eye and eventually was allowed to participate.

SV: What is your philosophy towards cooking?
GB: Great cuisine should retain its own tradition, even when one is being innovative. I don’t believe in the easy fusion of different cuisines: a cuisine is itself an integrated ensemble that has emerged over centuries after much trial and error. This is not to say that innovation or recombination is impossible, but it takes a lot of testing.

SV: What foods goes best with making love?
GB: A romantic restaurant, meal or wine is a completely nonEuropean idea. The French and Italians don’t understand the concept. They need the lights on to see the food, whereas dim lighting might be an advantage for some other things.

SV: What composer goes best with each meal?
GB: Monteverdi, Puccini or Dallapiccola with Tuscan food— Verdi for the rest of Italy.

SV: For whom, alive or dead, would you most like to cook?
GB: Boccaccio, who knew how to appreciate life. The author of the spicy tales of the Decameron, who inspired some of the racier parts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales also revealed his love of food in his constant references to such, as in his famous description of home made ravioli covered with sauce and cheese. A meal with him would be incredibly fun.

SV: When dining out, what is your favorite cuisine?
GB: Middle Eastern or Mexican. There is a naturalness in both that I find very satisfying.

SV: In which city is the location of your favorite restaurant?
GB: Florence. I have several favorites. Come to my school and I will take you to them!

SV: What do you draw upon for inspiration in the creation of your recipes?
GB: Mostly our family dishes. Pelligrino Artusi is one inspiration, along with other old Tuscan cookbooks. I always try to find the oldest sources for classic recipes, so I understand which modern variants are legitimate. I specialize in traditional dishes because I am concerned that some very valid ones are disappearing because of laziness—and I passionately want to preserve them. I get a feeling as if one rediscovers Vivaldi or Monteverdi after they had become forgotten.

SV: Italian cooking has been health conscious for centuries. What did the sixteenth century Italians consider to be part of a healthy diet?
GB: They emphasized that ingredients be eaten only in their best season. They stressed many vegetables, poached dishes, salads, and sweets only at the end of the meal. There were also many meatless days where several courses of fish were consumed. Cream was heavily reduced and butter, popular during Medieval times, and possibly a then recent discovery, was reduced significantly in the Renaissance.

SV: What excites you about the trends in American cooking these days, and what would you like to see change in the near future?
GB: I am excited to see that authentic and fresh ingredients are beginning to dominate the American cooking scene, but I would like to see the American local food traditions better maintained.

SV: What is your favorite junk food?
GB: McDonald’s “French” fries. The quotation marks are because both the technique of frying and potatoes were introduced to France by the Medici. What about “Florentine fries?”

Text © 2001 SYR Inc

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