Mauro grows up in Seine-Saint-Denis in a family of artists—jack-of-all-trades father, sculptor mother, a younger sister. In Aulnay-sous-Bois, the couple found more than a place to live; they found a space in which they could create.

It’s true, they’re not rolling in money. Yet there is never any compromise in what is served at the family dinner table. The meals are delicious and varied; they don’t eat just anything. Nor do they eat any old way: the plates are flower patterned, the glasses tulip shaped, the cloth napkins rolled inside boxwood rings. What is at play during mealtimes is conceived as a relationship with one’s body and an engagement with the world; the idea of self-awareness, or, in other words, what distinguishes humans from animals—Mauro’s father, Jacques, recalls in his tenor voice that German has two verbs for “eat”: essen (for humans) and fressen (for animals).

From the maternal—Italian—side of the family, the commensal culture of togetherness around a table brings a ritual aspect to each daily meal that is respected by all. What it also brings, alongside Anna—the adventurous, refined mother—is the sudden appearance of a grandmother, maker of legendary meals and walking repository of Tuscan cuisine, her recipes taken from the famous Talismano della felicità. From this point on, when the child enters the kitchen and ties a dish towel around his waist, he is under the dual influence of these almost polar opposites; or rather, as with all cooks, his odyssey is catalyzed by the continual friction between creativity and tradition, innovation and custom, surprise and simplicity.

To start with, though, the idea of creativity is dominant. That comes first, for the child, probably from seeing his mother, day after day, practice adapting and enhancing what she has at hand; seeing her use her resourcefulness and ingenuity to defy the constraints of tight purse strings. In other words, Mauro is taught the infinite variations to be drawn from simple, cheap products, with meat only once a week, and never a trip to a restaurant.

From the beginning, Mauro enters the kitchen as if he were entering a magical sphere, part playground and part laboratory. There, he employs fire and water, commands machines and robots, and soon he has mastered several metamorphoses: melting and crystallizing, evaporating and boiling; the passage from solid to liquid, from hot to cold, from white to black (and vice versa), from raw to cooked. The kitchen is the theater of the world’s transformation. In this way, cooking quickly becomes something more than a game with fixed rules; it is an object lesson, a chemical and sensory adventure.