“I'm obsessed with creating new things.” Interview with Chiara Pannozzo

A contemporary chef who doesn't like to call herself a chef

Chiara doesn't like to call herself a chef, but she defines herself as obsessed with creating new things. “This obsession with me started first and foremost as a duty. I started doing my homework, the one from the bottom, doing the dishes. Then, since I was born as a very curious person, over time I started to relate to colleagues who knew more about it than me.” A success story, therefore, is what comes when something you do out of duty becomes a passion: “That's where the obsession started: the desire to have to know more and more things, to inform me, to browse around Italy through books, recipes, videos and raw materials. Today it has become my main skill: if I don't create new things I feel sick and depressed.” To create, the inspirations are wider than you can imagine: “When I arrived in Milan at 19 I didn't have an artistic culture, so on days off I started going to exhibitions and buying magazines. I started to observe the works of art, colors and textures, developing a very strong visual identity,” she reveals. “In addition to taste, aesthetics are fundamental for me. I try to understand how each individual element combines with the others, both in complex and simple preparations. Recently in Sicily I combined tomato, mulberry and carob syrup to accompany lunch: an unexpected combination of sour and sweet that creates a simple dish capable of making those who taste it say 'wow'”.

In the speech, words like duty come up several times. We ask her, therefore, if she feels that she has some sort of mission. “Absolutely yes,” he answers without hesitation. “I want to pass on the knowledge I learn to the people who work alongside me or to those who follow me, so that when they decide to follow their journey, it can be an enrichment for them. The mission lies in the approach: to teach others something new, just as I continue to do for myself.” And this mission also passes through social media. Chiara, in fact, has a good following on Instagram and has launched a format on YouTube called Speak Like Magni.

Chiara Pannozzo on YouTube: Speak like Magni is her mission

He describes it to us this way: “My format stems from the desire to tell what is behind the price on the receipt: the people, the work and the sacrifice that go into creating that raw material. I didn't want to do simple spoken interviews, so I decided to work side by side with the producers, whether it's fishing with the lamp, the production of ricotta or the harvest of tomatoes. I want to show everyone the real value of every profession, to create depth, awareness and respect for food, avoiding waste and superficial judgments.” Clear, isn't it?

We discover, here, that Tucci in Italy is not his first experience on the small screen. “In the past I did a TV cooking show, at the time I was against Instagram, the idea of having to prove that I was someone through a screen bothered me,” she admits and reveals. “Then I realized that there are various ways to use social networks. What drives me forward in my work is creativity and curiosity: when a cook stops being curious, he's a bit dead, because that's the beauty of a creative job,” and then he continues: “So, I started to show what I was doing for the sake of sharing it: the new dish, the ingredient discovered in a place, to show to colleagues to make them passionate.” And this is also a mission.

The kitchen on social media: what does a chef think of it?

Social media, however, also has a dark, or perhaps annoying, side. That of trends and microtrends, of contents made especially for virality, of performance. And the food world is not exempt from it, quite the contrary. “Those who do this job face a training course made of sacrifices. Today I don't think it's right to see people at home making videos without having any idea what they're doing. But the thing that hurts me the most is the waste of ingredients and raw materials. The value of cooking and manual skills has been lost,” he says, now with a certain bitterness.

Trends, then, do not exist only on social networks. They also expand to old and new restaurants, especially in a city like Milan, where Chiara Pannozzo lives and works. “Milan is a bit of the capital of trends,” he says. “Often we think more about the image - the steel plate, the trendy place - and the high price, which does not give a real value to what is really on the plate. When I go out to eat I want to have an experience of taste and to know, I want to go home with an extra idea,” he concludes, giving us a big clue about the way in which we enjoy our dinners out. A starting point that extends to his favorite chefs, or those from whom he took inspiration (and from whom, therefore, we can do it too): his names are Alex Atala, Brazilian, and Valentin Amine Raffali, French-Moroccan.

The last questions, as usual, concern the future and a new generation of chefs, or rather cooks. This is his advice to a person who wants to enter the sector: “I recommend not to run away, even when the chefs are abrupt. To achieve great goals, you need the right path: when I was young I wanted everything and immediately, but growing up I realized that I prefer to put all the time in the world into it and arrive solid and happy, rather than getting everything quickly and then getting bored or burned out.”

In his future, a new home... in the sense of a new kitchen, of course. “I want to stop in a restaurant kitchen again, I want to express myself every day, because I need that stability and that routine that I've always had. Then I would like to connect my video format more and more to the place where I work, to show all the products I bring to the table, telling about the people who make them. And in the future I would like to bring this type of dissemination and culinary exploration also to TV, making it accessible to everyone and not just to professionals.”