Opinion – Cozinha Bruta: Sorry, Bourdain: Silvio Lancellotti was already here when you arrived

I apologize for the likely confusion of my words. I write under the enormous impact, still very fresh, of the news of Silvio Lancellotti’s departure. A friend I never got to meet in person – and I feel terrible that I didn’t do more to make it possible for us to meet.

Journalist Silvio was a rare case of versatile talent. He knew Italian football like no one else. He wrote detective novels about the Mafia. He was a bitch dum cooker. And glutton. He brought all these talents together to talk about food, Italy and Italian food in print and on television.

As I never liked football too much, I met Silvio on Saturday nights, when I should have been 12 or 13 years old and he hosted a cooking show very late, but not as late as the Goulart de Andrade that would come later.

I apologize again because I still couldn’t find the name of the program. I think it was “Santa Ceia” and it was on channel 11. Maybe on 7. Or was it already on 13? I only remember very well that the opening had the musical theme that Nino Rota composed for “Amarcord”, by Fellini.

Silvio, with his Italian accent of the folkloric paulistanos – although he was from São Vicente, on the coast – was always behind a giant pot of tomato sauce or a pizzeria oven. His plump, good-natured, flushed face sweated from the embers and the TV light.

I, who had already had dinner, got hungry again, went to the kitchen and took the risk of preparing something to eat.

The next day, Sunday, I managed to drag my parents to one of the places that Silvio had shown on the program. Thanks to Silvio, I discovered the Babbo Giovanni pizzeria, which was the one that existed in the 1980s and had a flavor named after the signore Lancellotti. I’m not going to risk kicking the frosting ingredients.

The guy was my reference. My inspiration. I got really scared when, about two years ago, the master wrote me to say that he was my reader. We exchanged numbers and turned penpalspen pals.

I had a podcast and I wanted to interview him about the history of pizza in São Paulo and the restaurants that disappeared along with the drizzle. He declined because he was in frail health. Especially the voice, which he insisted on not coming out.

A while later, he wrote to me saying that his voice was better and that he could record. Did not work. The podcast was (and still is) interrupted.

I never visited Silvio and his cats.

I apologize to Master Silvio for telling him all this too late.

I apologize (for today) to you who read me, for putting yet another “eubituary” through the cornea. It’s just that there wouldn’t be Cozinha Bruta if there weren’t Silvio Lancellotti pushing me into the kitchen on lonely Saturday nights.

without it is much more cool cite Bourdain as a reference, but the conductor Silvio came much earlier. Sorry there, Tony.

Bitch hugs, my friend Silvio. See if you rest now.

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