Chef Andrea Montefusco

Melbourne, Australia

Name: Andrea Montefusco
Age: 35
Nationality: Italian
Country of Residence: Australia

1. Your Restaurant/Business: Delicious Italian

2. About Your Kitchen: Delicious Italian is a Melbourne-based company providing hospitality consulting to businesses such as restaurants, hotels and food manufacturers that have an Italian theme. We also do cooking classes and catering.

3. Your Favorite Chef Works Item: I love the Signature series, elegant but also comfortable.

4. First Job: Cleaning marble benches and dishes in a Neapolitan Pizzeria in Naples at the age of 13.

5. Your Cookbook: My favorite books are Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cuisine, but also the Silver Spoon (a must!)

6. Your Awards: Several. The dearest: Youngest Head Chef of the Year 1995, Amalfi Coast, Italy.

7. Your Cooking Inspiration: Italian grandma’s and busy mums, Alfonso Iaccarino and Ferran Adria (the Freud of Cooking).

8. Your Speciality Dish: Risottos (learned from the masters) and Pasta.

9. Favorite Dish To Eat: My Mum’s Tiramisu.

10. Weirdest Thing You Ever Ate: Large fried spiders in Cambodia and cow’s blood cakes in Kenya.

11. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Peanut

12. Favorite Drink: Brazilian Caipirinha

13. Favorite Wine: Sicilian Malvasia

14. Who Would You Most Like To Cook For: My grandparents whom I’ve never met.

15. Who Would You Least Like To Cook For: Food incompetents.

16. Favorite Things To Do When Not Cooking: Playing with my son.

17. Your Latest Project: A seaside winery.

18. Favorite City and Why: My birthplace Napoli (Naples), troubled but spectacular.

19. Your Greatest Indulgence: Pizza

20. Your All Time Best Culinary Tip: If you can’t be bothered, don’t cook it!!