In the eyes of most people,
dry pasta is not valued like fresh pasta.
It's considered a "poor man's dish."
It's madness.
Dry pasta has a thousand facets.
It is a science and a beautiful magic.
It commands you.
You need to understand it and dialogue with it.
When you put it on the plate…
you don't even need to try it.
You look at it,
and you fall in love.
Dry pasta is a very humble dish.
But if you create it with care and aim to make something extraordinary,
even spaghetti with garlic and oil become a dish fit for a king.
Lots of regions in Italy have dry pasta.
But Campania does it better than anyone.
Here on the Sorrento coast,
overlooking the Bay of Naples…
you have the sea air,
you have Vesuvius and volcanic soil.
It's also where you find Peppe Guida.
I don't think there's anybody anywhere in the world
who does with dry pasta what he does.
His pasta is just on another plane.
Peppe Guida is the pope of pasta.
Pasta dishes are not simple.
Peppe can create a tasting menu only made of pasta.
Dishes that will make you go from one side to the other
of your spectrum of emotions.
Every single dish can change the mood around the table.
The most elegant dish is a caress,
and the next one is a punch in your stomach,
and the next one is a slap on your face and wakes you up.
Peppe has two restaurants,
Osteria di Nonna Rosa, a Michelin-star restaurant…
and a simpler place, Villa Rosa.
His restaurants are named after his mom.
She's still working every day peeling vegetables, shelling peas,
and approving all the dishes.
He's cooking the food that he grew up eating,
that he's brought to another level.
It's a fantasy of an incredible Italian home-style restaurant.
It's also the most incredible pasta that you will ever encounter.
-Come on, Timothy. -Go get it.
Let's see now.
-Wait for me. -Here.
Hmm. Look how beautiful this is.
The branches are so full of lemons that they bend.
Do you see that?
Even I can reach here.
Look at this.
Go on, pick it up.
No pasta dish I ever make has more than three or four ingredients.
You don't need to put together ten ingredients.
It only creates confusion,
both on the palate and in the mind.
So sweet.
Lemons have an incredible, pronounced aroma.
If I use a lemon to make a pasta dish,
I need to make sure that the lemon comes through.
Lemons are great for infusions.
That's why I cook pasta directly in a lemon peel infusion.
The spaghetti absorb the essential oils of the lemon.
Imagine for a moment the taste that it releases.
Take a lemon.
Grate it, put it near your nose,
and smell that extraordinary scent of essential oils.
The same thing is transferred to the pasta.
It's a dish of extreme simplicity…
with a flavor that makes your head spin.
That's the philosophy of all my dishes.
My aim is for you to have a bite of my lemon spaghetti…
and be left with a taste that you'll never forget.
Cut them small.
I grew up with my mom in the kitchen.
Do you want to check the salt?
She'd leave me in the stroller, in a kitchen's corner.
Is it good?
-Enough salt. It's good. -Okay.
I was addicted to the scent of onions sizzling,
of tomatoes starting to cook…
At that time, we didn't have much.
There wasn't steak or chicken every day.
But there was always pasta.
I saw my mother cooking…
with love, passion, and sacrifice.
Dishes with incredible flavor.
My first breath and my entire growing up were marked
by her culinary traditions, her scents and dishes.
-Thank you. -Let's eat.
That's why I say I wasn't weaned on milk,
but on tomatoes.
On meatballs.
On the tradition of my homeland.
Naples has not always been rich.
There've been times when Neapolitans had to invent dishes every day to survive.
But one thing they had was the sea.
And if they didn't catch any fish or didn't have any shellfish,
they found ways of making a dish with nothing.
The rich ate spaghetti with seafood.
When people had no money and wanted to eat something from the sea,
they invented using stones as if they were seafood.
It's a dish that dates back to the dawn of time.
I revisited it in my own way.
The stones need to be covered by at least a centimeter of algae.
That's what will give the dish its flavor.
I make a garlic and oil base.
I cook the garlic a bit more.
The lightly scorched garlic releases an extraordinary scent.
It's what makes all the difference.
Then I add the cherry tomatoes and the stones, as if they were shellfish.
It is a dish that dates back to times of real hunger.
Today it's something scenic and luxurious.
You'd expect any ingredient in the pan…
but you'd never expect stones in your spaghetti course.
So,
Chef's opinion first.
-First I want to smell the scent. -Right, start with the scent.
-It has all these tiny cavities… -Exactly.
If you look carefully, there's also a bit of a tear.
When I was about 18 years old,
I had to start working.
I knew that I liked to cook.
But I still had everything to learn.
When I started to work in the kitchen…
I was the last of the whole brigade.
But I was hungry.
I wanted to understand, to learn.
Nobody took the time to teach me how to use a knife properly.
I had to observe and watch how they used a tool.
Little by little, I tried to acquire that mastery.
One day, the chef invited me to go and work with him
in a famous and luxurious hotel in Positano.
It was Le Sirenuse.
I couldn't believe it.
I didn't know what he saw in me.
He said to me, "You will come with me,
not because you are good, but because you're ambitious."
I spent a year there.
That year was fundamental for me. It shaped my path to haute cuisine.
Finishing the year at Le Sirenuse
was a real turning point for me.
I realized that I really liked being a cook…
but I couldn't stand someone giving me orders,
telling me how to make a dish.
I started thinking about opening my own place.
I had many fears at the beginning.
I was a newlywed.
Lella and I were just two kids who didn't have any money.
Lella said, "Don't worry."
She tried to make me see that it was complicated,
but together we could do it.
And she said,
"Let's do this."
My mother lent us the family house to open the simplest restaurant.
A small kitchen with four tables and plastic chairs.
The cuisine that my mom made at home.
By nature, I am very shy.
But Lella had a natural gift for hospitality.
A great hostess.
She was my voice, my eyes out in the dining room.
Lella gave Peppe the possibility
of doing what he wanted in the kitchen
because she took care of everything else.
She was the other half of Peppe.
Pasta with tomato sauce.
The same ritual for Carolina.
Here. This is the pulp, Peppe.
Keep an ear for the doorbell…
-Whose hat is this? -I found it there.
I look like a farmer from Battipaglia.
Spaghetti with tomato sauce is the dish
that symbolizes all Italian families.
It's something handed down from generation to generation.
Hey, screw it.
For us, it's much more than just filling the belly.
I wanted to modernize the dish.
And try to highlight the tomato.
When making preserves,
fully sun-ripened tomatoes…
are put in the bottles when fresh.
It's beautiful.
Then where is the mistake?
LONG LIVE MOM
When preparing a sauce,
if you cook them for half an hour, 40 minutes,
you'll ruin them.
I wondered, "How can I make a dish of spaghetti with tomatoes
keeping the scent and color of when the fresh tomato was bottled?"
Once you add pasta to the water…
you can start cooking the tomato.
So you start a countdown.
The pasta is cooked in eight minutes.
So four minutes in the water,
and four minutes in the tomato sauce.
Doing it this way, the tomato cooks only briefly.
You'll keep the color and the scent of the seasonal sun-filled tomatoes.
Most people take pasta with tomato sauce for granted.
Peppe wants to make it something that you venerate.
It's called La Devozione because, once you taste that,
you become a devotee.
Do we have mozzarella?
Tell Giusy to go get 400 grams of mozzarella somewhere.
She has three minutes to go there. I'm making this rice with tomato.
At the first Osteria Nonna Rosa,
we served what we ate at home.
I wanted to do something more.
So I started studying.
I bought books by all the greatest chefs in the world.
I started to understand their thinking.
Their philosophy of cuisine.
I put everything in a cauldron,
took the best,
and tried to apply it to dishes of my homeland.
This is where I got the idea for my spaghetti with lemon water.
That dish comes
from an old recipe full of fats.
My studies made me look at this dish with a modern twist.
How could I make it lighter
while keeping the flavors of the tradition of my homeland?
I started to remove things, leaving only the essences.
An extremely flavorful and elegant dish.
And there began my real happiness in cooking…
playing with tradition…
while defining it in my own way, with my own ideas.
I was hungry for fame.
I wanted to get the press to talk about my osteria, my family…
and I wanted to achieve a Michelin star.
We reset everything.
Wooden tables.
Linen tablecloths on the tables.
Cutlery.
Crystal glasses.
The customers were confused.
When they got to the restaurant,
they found everything had changed.
And they didn't like it.
They'd leave the table without even looking at the menu.
In the span of three or four months,
all of our customers disappeared.
There were chefs who laughed at us.
They'd say, "This guy wants to make a great restaurant,
but where did he study?"
"Who are the chefs who trained him?"
"He thinks he's a chef, but he's not a chef."
That worried me.
But there was always Lella next to me.
Then little by little
people began to show up and try it…
try and try…
and it exploded.
We had to send people away.
We didn't have enough room to seat them.
When you start to aim for the star,
you have to be focused every day.
You never know when an inspector comes to visit.
Sometimes you don't even know it's them.
So putting your customers at ease is essential.
But there was a problem.
I've always been quite shy.
For you, prawn carpaccio from South to North, starting from Sicily…
At a starred restaurant,
it is a custom for the chefs
to go around the tables and greet everyone.
I didn't do this.
Lella tried to make me understand
that if I wanted to aim for a Michelin star,
I had to start talking to customers in the dining room.
Lella was shouting over the kitchen,
"Peppe, can you come up?"
And you could hear him say, "No."
It was very difficult for me.
Lella would encourage me and say, "People want to talk to you."
"I can't always be the go-between."
Good evening.
-Good evening. -How is it going?
Very good. Excellent.
How was dinner?
She pushed him to talk to people.
He started to come out.
Thank you. Did you like the spaghetti, ma'am?
Fantastic.
One day, someone called the osteria,
and they said, "Get ready."
"Tonight there'll be a shower of stars."
"And a star will also fall in Vico Equense."
The Osteria Nonna Rosa
had received the Michelin star.
I was blown away.
I'm almost done with the harvest. Dad, how are you doing?
My basket is full!
Mine is full already.
That's a small basket. I've got a huge one here.
-So these are good for a spaghetti sauce? -Yeah, spaghetti is the best with these.
Garlic, oil, a lot of basil, and these tomatoes…
We haven't made any scarpariello recipe lately.
There's a mosquito on your forehead.
It probably bit you.
In 2012,
I wanted to find a beautiful place
where I could build a little country house.
They showed me this piece of land.
It was completely overgrown.
It hadn't been cared for in years.
Careful.
There was an amazing scenery and a breathtaking view.
I knew it was the place I was looking for.
We spent the first six months just clearing the land.
Every day, we cleaned, pruned a plant, or tidied up.
Everyone in the family.
It was all just us, our own work.
An idea started coming to my mind.
Traditionally, in our region, the whole family gathers on Sundays.
Mom and Grandma fill the table with food.
They take out everything they have in the refrigerator,
in the cabinet, just anything.
My mom also passed this tradition down to me.
So I wanted to open a restaurant where I could offer my clientele
all that we have on Sundays in the homes around here.
When my guests sit down, their table must be rich,
full of food until they say, "Stop."
When we opened…
I was in the kitchen with my team…
my son…
my mom…
and in the dining room there was Lella, helped by Rossella.
The feeling of family.
It was a dream.
At Villa Rosa,
we had exactly what I'd always wanted to create.
Then… everything turned upside down.
Lella started to realize that there was something wrong.
She felt some lumps.
We went to the doctor who recommended some tests.
When we found out it was one of the most aggressive cancers…
I was left speechless.
We would take her to Naples for her therapy.
The doctor told us
that he was happy with the results of this therapy.
After one week, everything had crashed again.
I pretended to be positive but…
I was crying at night.
Hiding what we were going through from our guests with a smile…
and trying to pretend that everything was…
normal…
was a terrifying thing.
When she passed…
she left an unfillable void.
An immense void.
After Lella passed, we were so shocked…
that we didn't even talk to each other.
The pandemic triggered something in me.
Being powerless, unable to do anything.
I couldn't cook for anyone.
What could I do?
Talk.
I said to Rossella, "Shall we make some dishes?"
"I'll cook."
"I'll explain."
"You'll film."
"Let's see what happens."
Here we are!
Good morning!
Welcome! How are you? All good?
One day, I suggested making ragù at 6:30 a.m. on social media.
The day before, I told all my followers the ingredients.
Many told me, "Tomorrow it'll be just you and a few fools like you
who'll wake up at 6:30 to start making ragù."
The next morning,
there were more than 1,500 people
watching live from every corner of the world.
We started making our ragù,
myself and everyone who was watching live.
And then, we left it to simmer.
Tomato sauce.
How is it going?
At one o'clock, we added the pasta,
all together, from all over the world,
and cooked the ragù live.
We drained the pasta.
I did this, and everybody did this.
I seasoned my pasta,
and everyone seasoned their pasta,
and I ended by wishing buon appetito,
and sitting at the table
eating with 1,500 families of Italian immigrants all over the world.
This was an incredible emotion.
We were live online for days with my shows.
LET'S SERVE THE PASTA LET'S PUT DOWN THE PACCHERI
It was like a vent.
A big scream.
And people understood our authenticity.
It literally saved our lives.
Take a seat.
For Peppe, having the restaurant without Lella,
this must have seemed like the end of the world.
And instead he went beyond.
He decided to make the villa that they had purchased together
into a monument to her.
He made it into the place that she would have wanted.
Thanks.
LELLA'S HOUSE
Every day, when I arrive at the gate…
I feel her presence.
It's an incredible emotion.
-Grandma, how is it? -It's good.
Is it good?
Grandma approved it.
I want my children to be happy,
and that they live their lives.
For the most part, Lella and I did this already.
I'm still giving them every chance to have
a place where they can express their passion,
and pass on these traditions.
My son, Francesco, is a great yeast lover, and he gives us a hand,
especially with pastry, but also in the kitchen.
Rossella has this innate talent, like her mother,
for welcoming guests,
and making them feel at home from the moment they arrive.
When I started thinking about having a little restaurant…
it already seemed like something gigantic.
Never in my wildest dreams
could I have imagined getting where I have.
It's a beautiful feeling.