“For me, drawing is cooking with my imagination”

Mauro, your culinary signature is totally unique. What main influences have made you the chef you are today?
I come from Trentino but spent many years in Friuli. My father was head chef at the Lausanne Palace, and as a child I often used to visit him there. As a result, my cooking has deep Italian roots, while also being heavily influenced by classic French cuisine – the same basis that my father worked from during his time in Lausanne.

You often talk about the “classic foundations”. Why are they so important to you?
People always used to say that it takes at least 15 years to become a good cook. Today, you can earn your chef’s badge after five years, but often that means missing out on learning the fundamentals: basic sauces, garnishes, the classic culinary skills. These foundational elements are hardly ever taught any more. For me, it’s clear that only someone who is familiar with the traditional can truly develop something new.

But today we’ve got Google and ChatGPT for all that, of course, which make a lot of things easier.
That’s true. We used to have to meticulously write everything down – and if you weren’t fast enough, important information would get lost. These days I use new technology like ChatGPT too – not to write recipes, but to help myself stay organised or make quick comparisons. At the end of the day, what really matters is still the craft.

It sounds as if you have reservations about certain modern practices…
In the past, you quite literally had to beg, borrow and steal to master this profession. You had to be curious, watch closely, ask questions. Thinking back to my time in Venice, where I worked at the Excelsior Hotel with some of the great chefs of the time, one or another of them would sometimes show me a recipe or a technique, but always with the caveat, “Keep this to yourself, or you won’t get anything else from me.” It was almost like secret knowledge that could only be passed on if you had earned their trust. Perhaps everything moved a bit more slowly back then compared to now, but things were done with care.

And today?
Today there are countless courses and programmes, there are additives like alginate that make things much easier – in the past they weren’t available, which meant you really had to master the basics of classic cooking. Many young people come to us after five years of training and they have hardly any practical experience. That’s why it’s important to me that my young chefs learn these core skills here at the Kulm Hotel. It makes them more well-rounded as chefs.

How else did you acquire recipes and knowledge back then?
I bought a large number of recipe books – the cupboard in my office is still full of them, even today. I get them out and look through them again and again: from the repertoire of the 60s and 70s to Gualtiero Marchesi and right up to more modern classics – each one of these books has been by my side during a different phase of my life.

You are responsible for the culinary offerings of all the restaurants at the Kulm Hotel. How do you manage to choreograph all these different elements?
Each restaurant has its own identity. My job is to make sure I have the right people around me and to support them. I give them ideas and starting points, which the teams develop further. This mean that all the venues maintain their independence and have their own unique signature – but at the same time, we preserve the quality and balance of the range of restaurants as a whole.

One project that is particularly close to your heart is the Kulm Pizzeria, where you yourself work as head chef. Do you find it difficult to ensure that such basic dish as pizza doesn’t feel incongruous at a five-star hotel?
Ultimately, it’s all about the ingredients – they make the difference. We always seek out the best products: tomatoes, which we reserve in July for the whole year, mozzarella from Southern Italy, tuna from Carloforte, capers from Pantelleria, anchovies from Cetara, flour from Molino Quaglia. Even for an apparently simple dish like pizza, the ingredients need to be the very best – even if there are only a few of them. That’s how even a pizza can reflect the standard of a five-star hotel. But we also serve much more than just pizza in the Pizzeria, of course.

What is the Kulm Hotel Pizzeria’s signature dish?
Lots of people ask me that, and it’s not an easy question to answer as we have lots of signature dishes. But one dish that I would never take off the menu is the Fegato alla Veneziana – Venetian-style calf’s liver. I am particularly fond of this dish; it’s a dish that I love and that has to be prepared according to clear rules.

You have an unusual method of developing dishes: drawing them on your iPad. How did that come about?
At the end of the 90s, I started working with a computer. I took photos of dishes and edited the images on my PC. But products often weren’t available when they weren’t in season – so how could I photograph them? So I thought to myself, why don’t I do what my father used to do and sketch the dishes? So I began to draw my recipes –first on paper, later on my iPad. With colours, shapes and notes.

And how does that work on the iPad, exactly?
Under my drawing, I write the recipe by hand – digitally, but still in a very personal way. Drawing helps me to imagine the plate and get creative. It’s like cooking with my imagination – an analogue moment in a digital world. And I’ve always liked drawing, anyway.

How does your team react to these drawings?
They’re used to it. Some of them find it charming, almost nostalgic – an old tradition, but done in a modern way. The drawings with recipes aren’t just saved digitally, but are also printed out and placed in our internal menu book, so they’re always available for all the chefs to use.

Do you still have your father’s drawings?
Yes, I still have his books, drawings and photos, which provide me with lots of inspiration for my work. I’ve also thought about publishing my own sketches as a book – to ensure that this legacy is preserved for future generations.

Does every new dish start with a sketch?
Yes, almost always. Maybe it’s an idea from the market, a special ingredient – I draw it, develop it further, cook it, and then if necessary, I continue to tweak it.

Where will your culinary journey at the Kulm Hotel be taking you over the next few years?
The Kulm Hotel has big plans for the future. We are already thinking about how we can implement these in the food we offer. Lots of things inspire me, I’m inquisitive – but for me, the most important thing is to stay authentic. Imitation doesn’t achieve anything.

And what about at home? Do you cook there, too?
At home, my wife does most of the cooking – simple, but good. When I cook, it’s usually something like a Pasta al pomodoro – but using the best tomatoes and made with Felicetti, the single-grain pasta from the Dolomites, of course.