Giancarlo had been running Italian restaurants for thirty years until he met Katie in 1997. Katie was an artist and Giancarlo commissioned her to paint one of his restaurants to look like Pompei. He loved her painting and she loved his pasta, they now have two restaurants, a cookery school and two children (Giorgio and Flavio). Born in Montepulciano, Tuscany, Giancarlo Caldesi’s interest in food and cooking was inspired by his mother and grandmother, who he helped in the kitchen from an early age. He went on to study hotel management and catering at schools in Perugia and Liguria before moving to the UK in 1974. Giancarlo and Katie ran Caldesi Restaurant as a purely Tuscan venue and began making regular trips to Italy to research the Tuscan cuisine and discover new dishes. In Tuscany Giancarlo rediscovered his roots; the simple and effective peasant cooking of his family. The couple went on to launch Caffe Caldesi a less formal regional Italian restaurant and café and in 2005, after years of teaching in the restaurant kitchens, they launched La Cucina Caldesi, a state of the art cookery school where they run a diverse range of cooking courses for all ages and abilities. |
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| In 2006 Katie and Giancarlo appeared in the BBC television series Return to Tuscany which saw them take over a hotel in Tuscany where they ran a residential cookery school for a month. They also worked together on a BBC cookery book of the same name which was published in conjunction with the programme. This launched them both as TV chefs and they now make regular appearances on television for programmes such as Market Kitchen, Masterchef and BBC Breakfast as well as frequently contributing to articles in the national papers. The Caldesi’s fourth venture opened in 2007 and is a country style Italian restaurant called Caldesi in Campagna located in the culinary village of Bray, Berkshire. It is a relaxed restaurant offering rustic Italian cooking inspired by their travels in Italy.
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| Katie’s book The Italian Cookery Course was published in October 2009 and has recently been nominated for the Andre Simon Awards. It took her three years to write and contains over 440 recipes for classic and modern Italian food, masterclasses in culinary techniques as well as information on traditional Italian ingredients. It was also nominated in May 2011 for New York’s James Bear Foundation which is known as the Oscars of the culinary publishing World. Most recently Katie has launched Katie’s Kitchen an intimate cookery school specialising on hands-on cookery classes for a small groups at the Caldesi family home in Gerrad’s Cross. Giancarlo is still a regular to our TV screens and often visits the BBC Breakfast couch to talk about anything from the use of salt in our foods to putting calorie counts on to restaurant menus. Having made a success of their restaurants in Bray and Marylebone the pair are now looking for potential locations to open other Caldesi restaurants serving food that is cooked by Italians, served by Italians and loved by everyone. | ||
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