By Fabrizio Demichelis

Favourite food and dining experiences

I love seafood, since I’m from Piedmont. I worked there in the north, in the mountains. Then I decided I wanted to learn to cook seafood, so I moved to Tuscany and worked there for eight years. There I learned how to cook seafood very well because it’s my favourite. I like the traditional ‘land food’, but I also love fresh seafood that you can find in the Mediterranean.
I’ve been in KL for only four months. I like everything in the city but I don’t really know the right places to go for a good meal yet! Before [I came here], I was in Phuket, and it wasn’t bad. Also, I liked Australia. The meat, lobster and seafood are very nice and also cheap there. I also worked for four years in South America in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, and there also the seafood is fantastic, from the Caribbean Sea. You can have any kind of seafood.

Dishes that deserve recognition

We make a lot of dishes; not only pasta. There’s a roast meat we make called brasato and the preparation starts 48 hours before [you serve it]; you marinate it in red wine, cook for three, four hours, add the sauce and the meat becomes very tender. The sauce is very nice, it tastes of red wine. Also, we have many seafood dishes. You can see that in our menu, we have exactly the same amount of seafood and land food. It’s like two different menus in one.
 
The most important things learned

To have good staff and fresh ingredients, and that the best pasta is made at home. You don’t buy pasta from outside, you make it. The most important things are having good food and [having] people enjoy it because everything is fresh. I cook it ‘in the moment’. You order, I cook ‘in the moment’. I don’t even prepare sauce before. Fresh tomato, fresh everything. [It doesn’t matter even if] we are busy, everything has to be fresh.

Would you want to have your own cooking show?

Many people want to be on TV but I prefer giving good taste to people before being on TV with a big smile. You can be famous if your food is good. There are different ways of being famous; I prefer the traditional way.

Making good pasta

The simplest way to make good pasta: basically fresh tomato, a little bit of onion, a little bit of garlic, fresh Italian basil. That’s it. Cook for three, four minutes, add the pasta. This is the typical dish, pasta pomodoro. Or you have pesto. Blend fresh basil with pine nuts, parmesan and pepper, a little bit of garlic. And that’s it, very fresh and very simple. Simple is good. When you don’t confuse the tastes too much, you get the original taste which is better. Sometimes you eat fish but it’s not the fish you taste, you taste the sauce. I want to [be able to] taste the fish.


Fabrizio Demichelis is the executive chef at Delucca The Italian Restaurant @ One Residency (Office Tower Ground Floor, Jalan Mesui, Off Jalan Nagasari, KL/03 2144 6545/www.delucca.com.my).