Culinary Dedication: Meet our Chefs
By Mayte Almada
Photo of student team members by Isabela Elizondo, chef portraits by David Weiss
Sometime’s it’s difficult to gage just how much dedication and who is involved in the making of menus destined for an audience.
For our upcoming James Beard Foundation events, there are three key faculty members in the coordinating culinary team of “Florence: A city of many appetites.” Chefs Andrea Trapani, Simone De Castro and sous chef Desire Boualy have worked long and arduous months in the thinking, planning, testing, and tasting of the menus and their dishes.
Executive Chef Andrea Trapani had been on the lookout for dishes from all over Florence – restaurants, street vendors, and food shops. He chose the dishes that caught his eye and best represented the main theme of these events. He then made a careful analysis of the potential NYC team by taking into account culinary backgrounds, academic standing, and skills, in order to achieve a strong team. Andrea feels great satisfaction to be able to navigate his students through this experience for real-life perspective of the intensity of cuisine today that will stay with them forever. This will be his 9th opportunity to surprise and challenge the expectations of JBF guests and he considers every time a great honor.
Pastry Chef Simone De Castro plays an important role by making the grand finale at the JBF events with his spectacular desserts. Though he admits to having a fear of flying, the October week in NYC is one of the academic year’s absolute highlights. This will be his second time cooking/baking at JBF. The formation of the patry brigade is a meticulous one, as skills and seriousness are the two characteristics he looks for during the TuttoToscana application process. Simone collaborates with Andrea to provide desserts that would best describe the yearly theme of TuttoToscana events. This year, he has personalized regional desserts by “renewing” them in a way that his love for these desserts could be clearly expressed.
Chef Desire Boualy completes the coordinating chef team and is crucial to achieving culinary production and supervising students in NYC. Desire is utterly passionate about food, which he considers “one of the few beautiful things in the world whose absence would render us into nothing.” Chef compares his culinary style with courting a beautiful woman, who may stand out but is also delicate, fashionable, and light. His goal is to “wow” his guests by playing with all of their senses as they take on the journey of discovering his dishes. His whole life revolves around food and he dreams new recipes every day that reflect his personality and are thus original, and extremely personal. Every dish is planned in order to evoke happiness in diners. The satisfaction he feels when he sees a customers smile is the best response he could receive as a professional.
Watch out for this team of culinary masterminds who face the upcoming challenges of exporting Tuscany to NYC! They are excited to showcase their talent and passion for food, as well as the idea that Florence is many things at once, but it is always a stimulating source of inspiration.