Marco Bianchi

In Their Own Words

I grew up in a small town outside Naples, and my grandmother's kitchen was, how do I say this, the center of everything. The whole house rotated around that stove. I learned to cook before I learned to read, standing on a chair so I could see inside the pots, and by the time I was a teenager I could make a ragu that would make grown men sit down and go quiet for a while because sometimes the food is so good it takes the words right out of you. My grandmother would stand behind me, she wouldn't say a word the whole time, and when the ragu was finally right she would just give me this nod. That was better than any compliment you could give with your mouth.

I worked in kitchens across Italy through my twenties. Rome, Bologna, Florence. And I want you to understand something that most people outside Italy never learn: Neapolitan food and Tuscan food and Bolognese food are not the same thing. Not even close. This is very important to me, because in Bologna they cook with butter and pork fat, in Naples we use olive oil and tomatoes, and this is not a small difference, this is a whole different philosophy about what food is for and what it should taste like and how you show love to the people sitting at your table.

I came to the United States in my early thirties and fell in love with the chaos and creativity of American food culture. What surprised me wasn't how different it was from what I knew, it was how much of it was genuinely great, when people stopped apologizing for it. I write about perfecting a carbonara with the authority of someone who grew up twenty minutes from where it was born, and then I turn around and write about Texas barbecue with the same sincerity, because good food doesn't care what you paid for it. A Michelin-starred tasting menu and a gas station taco can both be the best thing you eat all week. That is something I believe with everything I have.

What are you afraid to cook? Whatever it is, I promise it is not as hard as you think.

Aisha Lowe writes the travel side here. We share a belief: the best way to understand a place is through what people eat there. She approaches from the journey. I approach from the plate. Together, it works.

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