Where the Chefs Eat asks your favourite chefs for their top restaurants in cities across the world. For this edition, we sit down with Francesco Mattana.
When I speak to Francesco Mattana, what strikes am most is his incredible energy. “I’ve had a lot of coffee,” he tells me, as he clutches an unopened copy of his new book, Eat Like a Sardinian. This is his debut cookbook. I’m amazed that he hasn’t ripped into it yet, but he is “saving the moment.” Francesco made his name as a chef and teacher of online cookery classes, like ‘Mastering the Art of Pasta,’ a course he is well-suited to teach thanks to his history as Head Teacher at Jamie Oliver‘s Cookery School. His debut publication is long-awaited by fans around the world. He, after all, grew up in Sardinia before travelling the world as a chef, and his culinary knowledge is extensive, his excitement and genuine love of food are boundless, and his energy levels are seemingly unstoppable.
Sardinia, aside from being his home, was the obvious place to focus his first book. It is one of the world’s five Blue Zones – areas with higher-than-usual numbers of centenarians. “There are so many Italian cookbooks,” he explains, “and, when you look at Italy, as with any country, I think it’s really special to deep dive region by region. Sardinia was the perfect starting point.” The reason for such longevity, Francesco feels, isn’t simply down to fresh, seasonal food and lots of exercise, but rather the community factor.
“Yes, a lot of it is down to the diet, but it’s everything else around it: the community, the exercises, having a glass of wine with friends, sharing the cooking as much as eating all of that stuff – that is what this book is about.” Many recipes found on the pages of Eat Like a Sardinian require few ingredients, such as the suckling pig, but Francesco insists that when the dish is cooked amongst friends or family and eaten together, “it always tastes better, because being together is part of living to 100.”
The influences of Sardinia’s neighbours are another notable characteristic of the food, Francesco tells me, because “if you look at where [Sardinia] is positioned, you’ve got Africa just under and Spain on the other side. As such, you’ll find spices that you won’t find in other parts of Italy – we use a lot of saffron and coriander, for example.”
