For Admission
Massimo Bottura
Over the past twenty years, Chef Massimo Bottura has become a leading figure among Italian chefs and a globally respected innovator and restaurateur. Osteria Francescana was awarded a third Michelin star in 2012 and currently is ranked second on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2014 Phaidon Press released Massimo Bottura’s first English language book Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef. The NETFLIX project CHEF’S TABLE, launched at the end of April 2015, featured a documentary on Osteria Francescana by Jiro Dreams of Sushi director David Gelb. From May until October 2015, Massimo Bottura took a leading role in EXPO Milano through his project Food for Soul at the Refettorio Ambrosiano. For the occasion, the chef invited colleagues from around the world to cook for the homeless using recycled waste from Expo. A documentary entitled Theater of Life will be released in June 2016 by Canadian Triplex Films and the Film Board of Canada. Massimo is continuing his work with Food for Soul by facilitating the opening of refectories in Turin, Bologna and an undisclosed location outside of Italy.
Lara Troly Gilmore
Lara Gilmore was born in Washington, DC in 1968. Before meeting her husband and chef, Massimo Bottura, she worked in New York at the avant-garde performance space The Kitchen and at Aperture Magazine. After a fateful encounter with the chef in 1993 in New York City, she moved to Modena and the couple opened Osteria Francescana two years later in 1995. Lara and Massimo have a shared passion for contemporary art that has altered the look of the restaurant over the years and tainted the kitchen with ideas from outside the culinary forum. Over the past twenty years, Lara has help translate Massimo’s vision into a narrative dialogue. To this day she testifies that her real job is “running after Massimo.”
