Um italian chef based in São Paulo for 10 years, he became a sensation on social media by teaching classic dishes from the “Belpaese” cuisine to the Brazilian public.
Originally from Salerno, in southern Italy, Antonio Maiolica, 38, runs the kitchens at the restaurants Temperani Trattoria and Temperani Cucina and has amassed a following of 900 on Instagram and 188 on TikTok, where recipes such as pasta with garlic and oil (1,4 million likes) or carbonara (565) introduce the public to the excellences “made in Italy”.
“Brazilians are fascinated by these recipes; they can see how simple it is to cook at home and how vast Italian cuisine is. Sometimes Brazilians think it's just pasta and pizza, but we have so much more,” Maiolica said in an interview with ANSA.
“It’s hard work to record three recipes a week, it’s very complicated with restaurants, but it’s a pleasure because I see that something is changing. People are starting to look for the ingredients, the guanciale, the pecorino…”, he adds.
A cook since he was 17, the chef lived in New York and traveled to Brazil to watch the 2014 World Cup, but fell in love with São Paulo, home to countless Italian restaurants, and decided to stay. “I thought to myself: 'I'm going to stay here because I have a mission to accomplish,'” he says.
Maiolica begins all of her videos with “Ciao ragazzi” (“Hi, everyone”), said with an already unmistakable accent, and has managed to captivate her audience with good humor and a hint of Brazilianness acquired over a decade in the country – her favorite Brazilian foods are feijoada, moqueca, pão de queijo and coxinha.
The pleasure of teaching is not restricted to social media: the chef also teaches pasta classes at the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners (Icif), where he receives students from all over Brazil. “It’s an honor to see a guy from Bahia or Pará learning how to make pasta with me,” he says.
Between October 21st and 27th, Maiolica will have the opportunity to reconnect with her home country during the Settimana della Cucina Regionale Italiana, which every year takes chefs from 20 regions of Italy to cook in 20 restaurants in São Paulo for a week.
Temperani Trattoria was selected for the event and will welcome a chef from Tuscany, Salvatore Toscano, from Osteria Mangiando Mangiando, in Greve in Chianti, to share the stoves with Maiolica.
Together, they will prepare a menu that includes pasta stuffed with potatoes and dried mushrooms, pasta with wild boar meat sauce and spices, beef cooked in red wine and pie stuffed with pastry cream and pine nuts.
“As I’ve been living in Brazil for 10 years, I sometimes end up far away from Italy, so it’s really cool to exchange information with the chef who comes here and remember forgotten flavors,” says Maiolica, who also doesn’t forget his passion for football.
Contrary to the historical connection between Italians and Palmeiras, the chef supports arch-rival Corinthians, a club whose first president was Sicilian tailor Michele “Miguel” Battaglia. “The Italian community has to know about this, but no one talks about it. It’s not just Palmeiras, okay?” he jokes. (HANDLE)
FOLLOW-US
