The Chef

Profession: Cook. Marco Saffirio’s mission

The chef of Osteria La Salita always had clear ideas since he was a child. “The passion for cooking always made me curious. Growing up I understood that being a cook had to be my work, and the kitchen became the ideal place in which to express my fantasy.”

Marco learns the gastronomic cultures of the family, he learns to appreciate the Emilia Romagna and Veneto cuisine. From this first approach to the art of food, the awareness of becoming a cook grows up and Marco enrolls in the Scuola Alberghiera “G. Giolitti” in Mondovì.

During school years, in summer, he gains experience in restaurants in Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d’Aosta. After his graduation, in 2001, he feels the need to express his talent and dynamicity in a reality in which he can grow and he accepts to work at “Castello Rosso” in Costigliole Saluzzo with chef Alessandro Ferrero, where he learns and perfections his gastronomic culture for banqueting and catering, weddings and themed evenings.

Marco passes with full marks his first great working experience after school and accuracy, tidiness and quickness in the preparation of a dish became an integral part of his good qualities.

His philosophy, marked by the direct choice of the raw material to create a quality food, refines in 2004 and 2005, thanks to the experience in Veneto at Andrea Sarni’s renowned restaurant “Il Principe”: he accompanies him towards the cuisine with capital C. Marco learns to make bread, pasta, and to realize dishes of great freshness, where his way of conceiving cuisine is well marked.

Then he goes to Girona, in Spain, where, at the famous restaurant “El Celler De Can Roca”, he lives, as he says: “A working period of some months, of great professional value in the field of creative cuisine.”

When he comes back to Italy, he works for about one year at “Castello Rosso”, where he becomes first cook and responsible for kitchen duties, then he gains experience with the great chef Massimo Camia at “Locanda del Borgo Antico di Barolo”, where the respect for food and for Piedmont cuisine become two “beliefs” for Marco.

Since February 2008 he moves to Monforte d’Alba, in the heart of Langhe and of the land of Barolo, where he runs the Osteria La Salita, proposing his cuisine, made of dishes prepared with excellent raw materials, fresh bread and pasta, where the guest is king.

Here Marco does culture, the culture of food. The kitchen is the beating heart of his restaurant. Concept, making and handling of the dish for a plain, essential and quality food. This is Marco Saffirio’s “belief”, the belief of a young and expert chef, always staking on very good raw materials.

To bring out local products, prepared in the open kitchen, made without secrets, and then presented and described to the guest, whose mind nearly prepares him/her to the sensory tasting.

A never ending journey of the taste beginning among the cookers: the guest tastes, understands and appreciates the specialties suggested, and then starts tasting them again. A continuous relationship also with producers: the themed evenings are designed to make guest and producer meet: at Osteria La Salita they can converse and know each other. Food talks in this way, too.