An Old World Italian MAt the age of 11, clutching a tiny, tobacco-colored cardboard suitcase with the aroma of mushrooms clinging to it, Giacomo Bulleri left his home in the rural Tuscan village of Collodi and boarded a train to try to find work. His mother had neatly folded and packed his country clothes — not appropriate for a city but the only clothes he had — to send him off to a place neither parent had ever been. The sixth child of poor, hardworking farmers, Bulleri was sent to Turin, where, his parents had heard, there was “a need for swift legs and sharp eyes.” In the city, he found work as “a jack of all trades” in a restaurant, he says. It would be two years before he would return home or see his parents again. By then, he had changed.
But Bulleri’s journey spanned more than just village to city. He also transformed from a scrappy kid on his own in 1930s Turin to proprietor of an understated empire in Milan consisting of a trio of restaurants, along with a cafe, a pastry shop, a tobacco shop and, this spring, a carryout lunch spot. Steeped, as Bulleri himself is, in the Italy of days past, these places are beloved in equal measure by the haute Milanese and a well-heeled international set. At 91, Bulleri presides over his domain — the Ristorante da Giacomo, the elegant Giacomo Bistrot next door and the grand Giacomo Arengario overlooking the drippy sandcastle Duomo — like a benevolent king, his baggy suit, dashing cravat and jauntily tipped Borsalino reminiscent of a chic mafia boss.
From “For the Love of Italy” by Deborah Needleman for the New York Times; Photo by Bert Teunissen
