I have been very lucky in my career and had the chance to travel all around the world to work with some of the world’s best chefs. This trip for Corriere Della Sera’s ‘Cook’ magazine took me to Matera in the south of Italy, right in the middle of Spaghetti Western country. The town Matera is a city built into the mountains in the middle of this desolated landscape. The houses and hotels are basically caves. The town had only recently been made into a modern city. It previously didn’t have a modern plumbing system which meant that the town had been left to disintegrate, considered poor and nobody wanted to live there. It became a dumping place for rubbish and a playground for drug users until the government put a lot of money into it and modernised it. Work began in the 1970’s and it is now one of the ‘must see’ destinations in southern Italy. The houses, (or caves,) are still there but now they have built in plumbing and are desirable to locals, businesses as well as tourists. The town has been the backdrop to many films, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ being one of them.
The Michelin star chef Vitantonio Lombardo packed down his Micheline star restaurant in Salerno and opened up shortly after in Matera, getting a Micheline star almost immediately, being the first restaurant in Matera to get one.
I spent 2 days in Matera, photographing the town, but also Chef Vitantonio Lombardo and his restaurant. Lombardo invited us to a 2 hour lunch experience which ended with a dish where we had to snog a pair of lips up from a plate, not using any cutlery, wearing earphones with an Italian love song on. It’s not many exclusive restaurants you see the diners pushing their whole plate into their faces, licking up a lipped shaped cake - but it was strangely nice…. Almost like being a teenager abroad, experiencing your first holiday romance: Slightly unsure how you approach the ‘lips’, the fear of the unknown, but when the lips (desert) meet your lips, you can’t stop…
Shot for Cook Magazine
