Gianluca D’Agostino was born in Naples in 1977 to Avellino parents. He
lived in Naples until he was 6 and returned to Avellino, in Castelvetere, until
he was 18. He has a home in Castelvetere and his wife is from there. Favorite
dishes: eggplant parmigiana in summer and sausage and friarielli in winter.
Despite an innate passion for cooking and family
culture for food full of respect, D’Agostino’s training goes beyond the classic
paths: he did not start at 15 years old and did not attend the hotel business,
after high school he enrolled in Law school in Naples, at Federico II.
To work in the kitchen is a need: to achieve
economic independence. Work started in Avellino’s trattorias, at the age of 24
and he had experience in London.
As a turning point in his training path,
D’Agostino remembers an episode that occurred during a Culinary Course in 2003 at
Città del Gusto in Rome. Chef-trainer Severino Gaiezza asked D’Agostino to work
as a cook in Focene, Fiumicino.
When someone gives you trust, independence and you
have the courage to jump, you become aware of your own growth. It was also a
useful experience to take further steps.
Steps that after years of training and work lead
to Veritas, Stefano Giancotti’s restaurant, which honors ingredients. A project
that is structured over time, grows in the number of collaborators in the
kitchen and in the dining room, until it reaches, with hard and gradual work
and with the support of the owner, the long-awaited recognition, the star.
In the small space of Corso Vittorio Emanuele in
Naples, the ambience is organized to give rest from the daily hectic pace and
to find a cuisine that evolves by going backwards, towards tradition.
For D’Agostino, the only way to compete with other
European cuisines is to look at Italian regional cuisine, where a multitude of
quality products are transformed into a million recipes, especially in the
South.
Obviously, everything is modernized with the support of technology: less fat, enhancing some flavors and lowering others, to achieve a weekly menu always in line with the balance of the Mediterranean diet.
Di MedEatResearch – Centro di Ricerche Sociali sulla Dieta Mediterranea, diretto da Marino Niola ed Elisabetta Moro, intervista a cura di dei corsisti del MCME – Master in Comunicazione Multimediale dell’Enogastronomia 2018/2019 – Stefano Cacurri, Daniele Bigazzi Cappelli, Giusy Caso, Leonardo Ciccarelli, Luca De Paola, Eleonora Furlani, Valentina Maresca, Cristina Nocera, Victoria Pastore. Scheda tecnica a cura di Luca De Paola. Novembre 2019Video a cura dei corsisti del MCME – Master in Comunicazione Multimediale dell’Enogastronomia 2018/2019
montaggio e sottotitoli a cura di Francesco Di Donna e Luca De Paola