Antonio Carluccio: The Mushroom Man

The Ambassador of Real Italian Food

When Antonio Carluccio arrived in Britain in 1975, nervous and tongue-tied, he found Italian food restricted mostly to London's Soho. There a few trattorie made their own pasta, and knew that olive oil was not merely for unblocking ears. At Lina Stores he could buy olives, panforte and dry spaghetti. Otherwise and elsewhere, what he called "Britalian" food held sway: ragù that was just flavoured mince, avocado served with a gloop made of ketchup and mayonnaise and, to finish, oranges in a sickly syrup masquerading as caramelata.

Three decades later, when Carluccio's was listed on the stock exchange and he and his then-wife, Priscilla Conran, had sold their stake for around £10m, his name was on the dark blue blinds of 130 outlets across the land. His 23 books and multiple TV series had made his curly white cap of hair and ample girth synonymous with real Italian food, the sort that made you sigh and cry "Fantastic!", like him, when you tasted it.

The Quiet Hunt

His notion of success was very different. It meant, after a slow stroll with his dog through bare woods on a misty November morning, uncovering a mushroom from the leaf-litter, cutting it off, weighing and savouring it and placing it, with reverence, in his basket. This "quiet hunt" had been his passion since the age of seven, and walks with his father in the Val d'Aosta.

For him the fun of living in England was not so much celebrity, as the fact that people knew almost nothing of fungi and were even afraid of them. The woods were full of untouched treasure.

In Hyde Park he found a puffball as big as a football, right beside the path. When he took full charge of his restaurant in Neal Street in the late 1980s, his mission was mushrooms in all their glorious variety. Gradually, they crept into his menus: turbot with honey fungus, supreme of pheasant with truffles. He would happily shave truffle over almost anything.

Minimum of Fuss, Maximum of Flavour

He used fungi to teach British diners to be more daring generally: to eat a stew made of lamb pluck, for example. Mushrooms also showed that the best things were transitory, seasonal, and had to be eaten as fresh as possible. The same applied to fish and vegetables: pick them fresh, cook them simply but wonderfully, as farmers' wives did.

A dish of fried ceps and potatoes was perfection, summing up his slogan mof mof: minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour. "Abundant wine to drink!" was all that needed adding.

In Natura Veritas

Behind the jovial smile, his life contained much sadness. The worst was the death by drowning, at 13, of his youngest brother Enrico. He could not begin to deal with the heaviness left in his heart except by foraging for wild things and painstakingly shaping them into something else.

The real problem, he knew, was that Carluccio the brand had come to obscure the man. The glossy stores were too far removed from handling and making things. They were too far from the woods and the joys of gathering, but that was the life that was true to him.

The motto he chose was in natura veritas. In Nature lay his truth.

Antonio Carluccio

The Ambassador of Real Italian Food

The Quiet Hunt

Minimum of Fuss, Maximum of Flavour

In Natura Veritas

Critical Analysis