Bistronomics
the making of a one star chef
memoir
An impetuous Italian struggles to reconcile his passionate love for the rustic food of Tuscany with the frustrations of running a bistro business in America. This adult narrative nonfiction is a cook’s memoir with elements of humour, cookbook, travel, social commentary and business advice.
Record-breaking numbers of restaurants are closing across the UK and in the USA too. It's a tough game, so an insider's view can be valuable as well as entertaining. Davide ran two successful Tuscan restaurants in California, and the book exposes the outrageous behaviour of review sites, including the full story of his hilarious long-running war with Yelp, the outline of which appeared on 'The Daily Show', the BBC's 'Sideways' and the film ‘Billion-dollar bully’. It narrates his idyllic rustic culinary upbringing by the nonnas in Collemontanino, the irreverent fish-obsessed culture of his schooldays in Livorno, his colourful exploits in California, and the untold story of what has happened since, which includes fleeing forest fires and cooking in thirty states. Arriving in the states with no money, no education and no English, Davide achieves the American Dream, working his way up to running a successful restaurant, then turning his back on it in favour of a far more playful and fractious relationship with the public, without bending the knee to unrealistic customer expectations and unequal relationships.
The life-affirming, inspiring tale of two decades of misadventure, this book tells the entertaining, true story of how Davide Cerretini applies his assertive uncompromising unafraid Livornese self with his love of American business creativity and confidence to help the world taste the hills of Tuscany. Davide’s voice cuts through loud and clear and reveals his irreverent lust for life and adventure. Its style is punchy and fun, with softer moments and tense passages, a few illustrations and ‘serve with’ recipes to help readers create a DIY virtual reality experience. Davide’s struggles with customer culture, fires, thieves, review sites, plague and planning committees create challenges of morale, cashflow and temper but he grins in the face of imminent ruin and plays 52-card pick up. By the end, we have a balanced view of the challenges and rewards of life in the Bistro game and a taste for ribollita and revolution.
Opening
Introduction
This is the story of Davide Cerretini, the Italian cook who became famous all over the States and beyond as ‘The One Star Chef’, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his extended battle with review site Yelp. It includes the full inside version of the story, elements of which have already been told in film, on TV and in newspapers all over the world, but it’s much more than that.
We take a trip to Tuscany to explore the source of Davide’s rebellion, through his idyllic rural boyhood in havens of traditional Tuscan food and culture. We dig up the roots of his stubborn refusal to be bullied and manipulated, his insistence on authenticity and his punchy, irreverent sense of humour.
We seek to reconcile the contradiction between his love of American ingenuity, energy and business nous with his fury at the corruption of egomaniacs like Berlusconi, and respect for the history and authenticity of his cuisine. We interrogate his enormous frustrations with both Italy and the USA. His drive to share the matchless food of his homeland in his unique style has never wavered despite countless obstacles, whether he is running his own restaurants, teaching cooking lessons to clients internationally or helping troubled restaurateurs as a business consultant.
As a bonus, it includes recipes introduced and explained by il cuoco himself – how to make a perfect Tuscan dish, and how to ruin it if you prefer to do things your own way, as some of his restaurant customers have over the years. As Davide explains, using this typeface to indicate his own words, distorted versions of Italian dishes have become the comfort food that everyone knows and loves, monstrosities loaded with spices, sauces and absurd pairings. We did agree that I’d tell his story, that he’d stay out of the narration like I stay out of his kitchen, but he can’t resist, and he’s the one with the knife.
Mostly though, this is the story of how an adventurous, accident-prone boy learned to love food as an expression of life, community and connection to the earth, and how he shared this love. We see his upbringing among the Nonnas of Tuscany, traditionalist cooks who nicknamed him Prezzemolo (parsley), a meddling child getting involved in everything in the kitchen, much as flat-leaf parsley finds its way into so many Italian dishes. We hear about his teenage years in Pisa and idealistic, naive journey to America with no English and no money. We applaud his success in making a name for himself running restaurants. We find out why he turns his back on his successful ristorante to start from scratch, going against the grain of customer-centric cuisine. We get the inside story of how he deliberately went to war with a multibillion-dollar international PLC to achieve the lowest possible star rating. We go along for the ride when he takes his cooking lessons on the road with his family, touring 30 states of the USA in search of a new culinary home. We tag along with his maddening return to Tuscany, before heading to the British Isles, which drives him even crazier. We even get a glimpse of what the future holds.
This labour of love has taken a year to research and write, by my friend Davide and myself. I met him through his wife Terri, a friend since the nineties when we read English Literature together at Cambridge University. Davide wanted to share the story and it felt important to get it right because many restaurateurs feel trapped by a system, when they’re not. There are always alternatives available. Davide reminds us of something it’s easy to forget: if you have the courage of your convictions and you’re prepared to take a risk, you can break rules, question whole systems, challenge tyranny and beat the bullies. I never expected to be the one behind a book like this, but I wish I’d been able to read something like it a few decades ago. He would have made different choices if he had, and hopes to save you some time, money and heartache.
Our book is organised like a biography or memoir, but there’s a recipe prefacing each chapter, because to make this story as immersive as possible, you need to taste it. To get as close as you can without a plane ticket and a time machine, try making the dish, then eat it, ideally while you read or listen to the chapter. If you do, you’ll learn about Davide, but also learn to make a decent dish or two along the way.
Buon appetito!