You're reading: Chef conquers Kyiv in ‘strictly Italian’ way

Niccolo Rossi doesn’t conform to the stale stereotype of a chef being overweight, drunk and rude.

The Italian culinary artist is actually in top shape, and cracks jokes on every topic, including himself.
“I don’t drink. I am a boring person,” laughs Rossi, 37, who has lived in Kyiv for two years.

“At the beginning of my career I was burning instead of cooking,” he recollects cooking with his mother at three or four years old in Florence, his hometown. “But that is how my career got started.”

It was followed by formal training at cooking schools, though, and master-classes from several prominent world chefs.

He’s been traveling the world for more than 12 years as a professional cook, visiting Great Britain, the U.S., the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Libya before arriving in Ukraine.

“You can see the world while you are working and this is probably the best thing about being a chef – you can move around and learn something new, but you have to be really open-minded,” he says.

Despite continuous learning and being constantly on the move, Rossi has kept to traditional Italian cooking.

That’s exactly why he demanded “Strictly Italian” be written at the top of the menu of Mille Miglia restaurant at Radisson Blu hotel in Kyiv, where he works. “When you come here you are in Italy,” says Rossi. “The only difference is that it’s a bit colder outside…Well, much colder.”

For example, Rossi said he would never put sour cream in seafood risotto even if a customer begged for it.

Niccolo Rossi

“Italian means Italian and if somebody wants to try something else they can go to whatever restaurant, but I’m not going do this,” Rossi said. “My rule is never change the approach.”

While convincing clients isn’t always easy, Rossi says he never tries to avoid them. “I like talking to customers,” he says. “Sometimes I come out myself or they call me. Mostly it is to compliment my dishes, though sometimes they don’t understand some tastes or combinations and then I have to explain and I feel okay with this.”

Rossi says Ukrainian customers are no less demanding than Europeans, though local restaurants and cafes are not always as good.

“I often go eat somewhere to see what the others are doing and the prices here usually don’t reflect the quality,” says Rossi

He does recommend Arbequina, Café de Paris, and he smiled when he mentioned Lviv Chocolate Shop, having worked as a chocolatier and a pastry chef in Italy at the beginning of his career.

“Now I cook everything, but I still like dessert, because I just like desserts, even though I almost don’t eat them,” he says and reveals that he mostly “eats to survive” while cooking is rather a kind of art for him.

This art demands a lot of learning and creativity. “It was truly hard to cook in Libya – without no pork and no alcohol, at all,” Rossi says. “Almost every Italian recipe contains some wine and that’s where I had to be on top of my creativity trying to substitute the necessary things,” he said.

By contrast Ukraine is much easier. “Most ingredients are easy to find here, more or less. The only problem is probably gluten-free products, (it’s) almost impossible to find them fast enough,” he explained.

For now, Rossi is not planning to move unless Radisson Blu wants him somewhere else.

Rossi has worked for the company for four years and says he plans to stay on despite getting several offers.

Even though money is good, its not the main point, Rossi said, and actually “you are paid peanuts when you compare how much you work.” But the cooking profession is always in demand, he added, and is not less paid in Ukraine than elsewhere.

There is a drawback to being a chef, Rossi concedes: “I don’t have a personal life at all, for me living in Kyiv mostly means working…Basically I am happy here, and this is not because you are interviewing me. My job is about making people happy,” he said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].