Among the students of Gualtiero Marchesi, Carlo Cracco stood out for his exquisite minimalism and disarming intuitions, with masterpiece dishes that have become a heritage for everyone. His is a great creative cuisine that has never compromised, despite television appearances and multiple endorsement activities.
Carlo Cracco was born in 1965 in Creazzo, in the Vicentino region, to a humble family: his father was a railway worker, his mother did odd jobs to make ends meet. As a child, he thought he wanted to be a priest, a vocation he soon abandoned. Then, against his parents' wishes, who thought he was just lazy and wanted to have fun, he enrolled at the Pellegrino Artusi hotel institute in Recoaro Terme, where he initially faced difficulties. So much so that he was repeatedly told he wasn't cut out for the job.
His sister introduced him to Gualtiero Mar chesi, the first Italian chef to have obtained three stars, and he decided to pack his bags in 1986, at just twenty-one years old. "Until military service I stayed in Vicenza, forbidden to leave. After the diploma I already had clear ideas, I went to Gualtiero Marchesi". Thus he became part of the dream team of Via Bonvesin de la Riva, a talent forge from which Andrea Berton and Davide Oldani, among others, would also emerge.
After three intense years, he asked the master how he could grow professionally. Marchesi answered by naming Alain Ducasse. The French period began by spending two years at the Louis XV of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, where a great Mediterranean cuisine was practiced, not without friction. "It was a traumatic experience, the competition was fierce, because an Italian abroad who wanted to work in high cuisine, was not looked upon kindly; back then we were always spaghetti, tomato and mozzarella".
He spent a year and a half alongside another great master, Alain Senderens of Lucas Carton, where the rhythms were grueling, in the narrow space between two fires and two chefs. Cracco was now ready for his first assignment as a chef, which he carried out at the prestigious Enoteca Pinchiorri, where he obtained the third MICHELIN star in a very short time.
At this point Gualtiero Marchesi unexpectedly called him back for the opening of Albereta in Erbusco, where Cracco stayed as a chef for three years, before opening his first restaurant as chef patron, Le Clivie in Piobesi d'Alba, where in one year he earned a star thanks to a cuisine of great purity and elegance, resonating with the Marchesian lesson of subtraction. And it is here that he became close to his most brilliant student, Matteo Baronetto, with whom he would develop masterpiece recipes.
But the invitation from the Stoppani family, owners of the Peck delicatessen, is one of those that cannot be refused: in 2001 he opened Cracco-Peck, a stone's throw from the Duomo in Milan, which earned one and then Two MICHELIN stars. The restaurant quickly became an epicenter of Italian avant-garde cuisine thanks to continuous innovations, such as marinating eggs or preparing non-animal or vegetable pastas, which spread virally, becoming contemporary classics. And from 2007 the company structures changed: Carlo Cracco became a chef patron and only his name remained on the sign.
Despite his shy and reserved temperament, Cracco became a familiar face on television as a judge on Masterchef from 2011 to 2017, appearing more and more often on magazine covers and in advertisements. Perhaps because he was less frequently at the restaurant, MICHELIN downgraded him, taking away his second star, after years of aiming for the third. But instead of complaining, the Venetian chef bounced back, closing the restaurant on Victor Hugo Street and moving to Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan's salon, where his master Gualtiero Marchesi had always dreamed of cooking.
The opening of Cracco in Galleria fell in February 2018: 1200 square meters spread over several floors, where various activities and offers find space, with pastry, chocolate, wine, on the ground floor the Cracco cafe, above the fine dining and Mengoni Room for parties and events, with a cellar of over 7000 bottles. Despite the rumors, the chef exults: "An entrepreneurial bet, the first real project totally on my own". But this is not the only activity of Cracco, who over the years opens a farm with wine production in Romagna and several other places: the bistro Carlo and Camilla in Segheria in 2014, Ovo by Carlo Cracco in Moscow in 2016, Carlo al Naviglio and Cracco Portofino in 2021.
