Recipe for success

I wonder how the chef will manage to contain himself in the weeks leading up to his appearance at the city’s annual Foodies Festival.

“I CAN’T wait to come-a Brighton!” he bellows. “I love Brighton! I need to put my hands inside the sea and taste the salt!”

Taste the salt? “Yeah, yeah. I was born 30 metres from the sea in Minori [on Italy’s Amalfi coast] and my father taught me that the sea can travel all over the world, it can touch my little beach in Minori and it can touch me in Brighton.

You touch the sea, you get in touch!”

That’s a romantic idea, I say. “I’m a romantic bugger!” he replies happily.

Should anyone doubt the authenticity of the fullblooded, full-tilt Italian whirlwind seen bickering with old friend Antonio Carluccio in the BBC’s Two Greedy Italians or posing on speedboats with bikini-clad babes in Jamie Oliver’s Jamie and Jimmy’s Food Fight, I can tell you it’s genuine.

He sounds like he’s already downed seven espressos – or a fair few grappas – and it’s not even Monday lunchtime.

He’s in Covent Garden – or as he pronounces it “COVENT GARDEN!” – when we speak, preparing a dish of sea bass dish for the Jamie’s Italian there.

“Now, at the moment we’re doing fennel, peppers, aubergines, little courgettes, then we’ll put a little vinegar on the fish and griddle it.

Oh, it will be very good!”

He proudly boasts of working in Oliver’s kitchens every day of his life and promises if he’s ever in the Brighton branch in Black Lion Street, I’ll find him in the kitchen getting his hands dirty.

Formerly the executive chef of his own restaurant, Passione in London’s Charlotte Street, Contaldo met Jamie Oliver when he was tasked with training the younger chef at Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Street restaurant during the 1990s.

Their relationship has proved one of the most defining of Contaldo’s career.

When I ask him if he misses running his own restaurant, he tells me he would not have given it up for nothing.

“But I did give it up because Jamie had this dream as a young boy.

He said, ‘Y’know what big boy, one day I’m going to become very famous and open restaurants all over England’.

“He said I don’t want you to work so hard so you will join me. WHAT A BIG LIAR! I work hard for him every day!”

He’s thrilled, of course.

This is a man who carries a picture of Oliver in his wallet – “Oh bless him!” he purrs when he gets it out – and says, quite seriously, that Oliver is one of his six children.

“I see him most weeks working together, filming together, always he is taking the mick out of me!”

Do they argue, I ask?

“Argue with Jamie? No way.

Joking though, we joke a lot. Sometimes we have a meeting; there will be five minutes of being very serious and then three hours talking about rubbish.”

Rather different then, to his relationship with Antonio Carluccio. The pair famously spent ten years not talking to each other (neither will reveal the cause of the rift) before patching things up in 2008, when Carluccio was said to have tried to commit suicide in his kitchen.

“I believe we always missed each others and when he tried to hurt himself I didn’t know what was going on. So I went straight to Turin and when I heard his voice I just said, cut out all the rubbish, are you all right?

“After that we came back together and now I phone him up all the time – ask him if you see him! Our friendship is not less, it’s more now.”

Although at 64 Contaldo is a decade younger than his friend, both chefs were visibly surprised by the Italy they returned to in Two Greedy Italians after several decades living in the UK.

“We left Italy in black and white and when we went back it was in colour,”

as Contaldo puts it.

“A lot of people have moved to modern ways but the culture, the history, the family – that was all still there.”

In Jamie and Jimmy’s Food Fight – which pitted different national cuisines against each other – the Italians were amusingly unimpressed by British fare.

What does he make of it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, he tells me he LOVES British food.

“I remember coming to England many years ago and trying a full English breakfast – I thought I was going to puke! Then when I tried fish and chips I thought, how can they eat this? But now I can eat an English breakfast cooked with care and I will give fish and chips five Michelin stars! I eat it every month.”

He’s going to face a conundrum when he comes to Brighton next month, I say. Will he choose to eat in Carluccios, on Church Street, or at Jamie’s Italian?

Won’t he offend one friend whatever he chooses? But to him, there is no contest.

“How can I go to somewhere else in Brighton?

I’m sure Carluccio’s is good but remember, once I was a part of it. I’m sure me and Antonio will have an argument if I go there!

“C’mon, I go Jamie’s Italian! Fantastico!”

Carluccio has cast doubt on whether a non-Italian can cook Italian food; what’s Contaldo’s take on that, I ask?

“This is what Antonio say! He always has to say something. I fully disagree with him. People in England are so talented. An English boy wants to learn how to cook, he will take a little while to cook but when he learns, he can cook any country in the world.”

By way of example he cites – you guessed it – the “very talented” Jamie.

There’s no disputing this is one proud papa.

What we can expect from his appearance at Foodie’s is anyone’s guess.

“I would like to cook shellfish maybe, a little pasta… then somethingsomething- something. I do not know until I’m there and I see what there is.”

And then he’s off again about his love for Brighton and how he’s going to put his hands inside the sea.

He has a brainwave. “Do you know what? Tell them (he means you, Seven Days readers) if they can catch me with my hands in the water they can win a book from me.

“Tell them Gennaro said he will give a book but you have to catch him! Only for the first one that comes along remember – not for everybody.

“Tell them to come between Black Lion Street and the pier on May 4 and if they spot me in the morning and give me their name they’re going to get my latest book [last year’s Let’s Cook Italian]!”

He breathes for what might be the first time in half an hour, his message delivered loud and clear – catch this greedy Italian if you can.

*Gennaro Contaldo will be at the Foodies Festival Brighton from 2pm on May 4.

For more details, visit www.foodiesfestival.com