I have just been reborn. again. After 4 hours on a culinary journey through Italian culture with Massimo as our adventure guide I can officially say the best restaurant in the world has found it’s home in the center of Modena Italy. I’m clearly not the first person to say this, San Pelligrino just named Osteria Francescana the #1 restaurant on the planet, and from the reviews, not many disagree. Before I start to sound like I’m bragging about eating at some pretentious expensive snobbery you have to watch Netflix’s series Chef’s Table Season 1 Episode 1. It was in that moment that we first learned about Osteria Francescana, and more importantly the mad scientist behind the brilliance, Chef Massimo, that we fell in love with his vision and concept of not only food but reality, and bucketlisted it as the most important culinary experience of our life. As fate would have it, we moved to Italy...and Modena was only a 2 hour drive from our home...oh but wait, getting a reservation is almost impossible. After being denied month and month again it had seemed all hope was lost - but prayer works - and when we added the human connection of calling and talking to someone we were miraculously added to the list. The date... today!
Okay so that’s a long intro to say what I really want to say. Beyond the food being absolutely daringly perfect, and the company of the most beautiful woman as my sojourning partner, meeting Massimo was like meeting a modern day profit. That sounds really stupid saying. I know. But it is so real. He is a culinary profit. And if you know anything about me, I couldn’t care less about peoples ‘social status’ in this world, rich, famous, blah blah none of this impresses me - I care about people, and if you’re a genuine human then I’m impressed and if you’re not then you’re not. Something was different today. I was kind of an 80’s teenage girl meeting New Kids on the Block. But not in the same way. Like somehow he had my respect and admiration immediately, and in the 3 minutes he talked with us, there was nothing but pure humanity - absolute authenticity. But I digress.
So here we are, talking with the “Sting” of cooking, and telling him about how our kids are so jealous that we are getting to eat there, and then he drops the ultimate one liner and just walked away. In his emphasis that ‘if the kids want to share their gifts with the world, and especially in the food world’, he encouraged study and hard work and then said as if saying something so common like have a good day, or make sure you do your best, he said “Culture is the #1 ingredient of the Future” mic dropped and walked away. As I put my blown mind back together and helped revive Shiloh from a revelation heart attack my iPhone seemed a million miles away to type in the genius that he just expressed to us and I was left there to chew on this prophetic word he just gave to our children. There is no way to describe this moment. It was a word for us, not a post card, not a repetitive statement, an honest and true revelation. The closest thing I can compare it to, is when the guitar comes in at 2:34 on Mumford & Sons ‘Believe’ (for those who know, you KNOW, and if you don’t, please listen to it a million times).
That’s it. I’m done. I will recap this trip here and how incredible Modena is and what an amazing last few days we have had, but for now, I have to open a bottle of wine and drink it in while digesting the experience of a lifetime with my loved ones.
Ciao.
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