The chef's backpack

After more than four decades as a culinary professional, the first phase of my life as a chef is drawing to a close, one characterized by time spent at the stove in sweltering kitchens with noisy brigades, menus written late at night, a seemingly infinite number of events and many, many stories.
It was an intense, concrete period that involved both my head and my hands.
My career has given me so much, but its path was not without obstacles.
I had to figure out a lot on my own, pay with experience, hard work and, of course, a few mistakes.
And that is precisely why the second part of my journey is dedicated to communication.
I want to share with new generations what I wish I had known when I was young and no one told me.
The Chef’s Backpack is the result of this intention.
It’s a metaphor, but not one without substance, a symbolic space where tools, visions, ideas and advice can be stored. It holds content you can take with you
wherever you go.
So many days, service after service: I could narrate that lived experience in a number of ways – with a ponderous tone, perhaps with the air of someone who has “seen it all” – but I don’t think that’s really useful today.
The metaphor of the backpack offers me a new more agile instrument, language with a clear and direct tone suitable for talking to young people.
I don’t want to sound like a professor **declaiming from the safety of my lectern, but rather like a colleague who is just a bit further down the career path, one who stops for a moment and says, “Take a look at this thing right here… it can help you.”
That’s it.
Wielding the backpack is not an excuse to pontificate: it offers tools but leaves plenty of space for those who want to fill it with their own tools and stories.