Gianni Picchi, chef and restaurateur, was born in the village of Cagli in the Marche region of Italy 71 years ago today and raised a few kilometres away in Umbria, in the village of Norcia.
The food on the family's table came from their garden, from the fields and the forests. With their mother, a professional chef, Gianni and his sister Graziella would forage for truffles, the black and the elusive white, and for the wild herbs and greens that are staples in the local cuisine. Graziella has a doctorate in rural sociology and is an authority on those wild herbs and greens, plentiful in those days, increasingly rare today, but her brother had no notion of making food his career. In fact, Gianni was to be apprenticed as a stonemason, destined to live out his life in Norcia.
Then a door into the wide world opened for young Gianni. Older boys who had left the village returned, well dressed, with lire to burn and stories to tell. They worked in restaurants and hotels. They travelled the world. "They were going places, literally, and I liked that. I didn't want to breathe marble dust all my life."
Gianni studied hotel management in Assisi and in Venice, acquiring a foundation in all aspects of the business, from "the front" to the kitchen, along with the ability to communicate in English, French and German. Among his instructors and mentors was Rigamonti, who had worked with the legendary chef Escoffier and Ferrera, formerly the maître d' at the equally legendary Hotel Danieli. "The knowledge these men had acquired firsthand and passed on was like gold," says their student. Gianni has vivid memories of standing at a table he had set for dining, his instructor sighting along its length, alert to the smallest deviation in alignment of glass, china and silver.
Gianni's first job after school was in Guernsey, the tiny Channel Island closest to Brittany, where he met Carol Boulter, the love of his life, "in a little nightspot called the Cellar Club."
After five years at Guernsey's finest restaurant, Gianni came down with a fever. "I had cabin fever. Guernsey is not much bigger than Bowen Island, after all. I wanted to go to the biggest country in the world, well, not Russia, the next biggest."
Gianni, Carol and son Roberto made their way to Toronto, Ont., where daughter Andrea was born. In Canada, Gianni spread his wings and his career in the food and hospitality industry took off - literally, again, as the family Picchi made its way across the country. He got his start at Winston's, working at the legendary restaurant until he was lured to B.C. by the CP Hotel chain.
From the Banff Springs Hotel, the next move was to the West Coast where Gianni ran the Chateau Victoria rooftop restaurant for a decade. On to Vancouver, where Gianni worked with Umberto Menghi for another decade. The two are friends, colleagues and amicable rivals, raised not far from each other back in Italy, with career trajectories almost parallel.
Gianni was executive chef and restaurant manager with Umberto, most notably as Il Giardino became the dining mecca
for Vancouver's rising film and television industry. At last came his own restaurant, Gianni's, located on Granville Street where Szasz's restaurant once stood and is now occupied by West.
In Gianni's kitchen, in Umberto's and in others of that time, a great number of Vancouver's restaurant force was trained to standards in the tradition of Escoffier and the Hotel Danieli. Today, as one former apprentice named David Hawksworth is doing, they are putting their mark on the industry and mentoring the young chefs who will come after them.
At 71, Gianni is not ready to retire, though he is comfortable in his West Vancouver home, enjoying his 50th year of marriage with Carol. "I'm still building my life," he says. Chefs at this level are artists, born with a combination of talent, focus and showmanship found in no other profession that shines brightest in a restaurant setting. The time for Gianni to write his memoirs, in the company of art and music and his family, will come, perhaps after one, or two, more restaurants.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
