Giancarlo Caldesi

The Proprietor

Giancarlo learnt to cook from his parents and his aunt Orlandina in Tuscany.

He grew up on a smallholding with his family where 90% of what they ate came from the land. He began working at a young age on the farm and by 13 years worked a summer in a coffee shop.

After completing catering school, the young Giancarlo became a paratrooper as part of his national service. After two years he moved to Rome to train as a waiter at the Rome Hilton Cavalieri and was later transferred to London to the Park Lane Hilton. It wasn’t long before the hard work paid off and Giancarlo bought his first restaurant in 1986, the Edelweiss in Beckton, opened by Princess Diana. In fact, the tiramisu we serve today is the recipe Giancarlo developed (with a special ingredient from Tuscany) for the lady herself.

Giancarlo went on to open further restaurants in the City of London and the West End. It was in the city that Giancarlo employed Katie to paint a mural. Together they authored ‘The Italian Mamas Kitchen’ recording his mother’s recipes. Another 18 cookbooks followed with subjects ranging from Preserving, Salad, Amalfi, Rome, Tuscany, Venice and Sicily.

The couple came to national attention when they featured in the BBC2 series Return to Tuscany in 2006. The series, which was broadcast world-wide, followed the jovial ‘larger than life’ chef as he and his then fiancée Katie set up and launched a residential cookery school in Tuscany. The show climaxed with them getting married in a dreamlike Tuscan wedding. Link to see show.

Since the series Giancarlo has been a frequent visitor to our screens appearing as a guest on a vast array of foodie programmes such as BBC’s Masterchef ,Saturday Kitchen and C4’s Sunday Brunch. Giancarlo has also been a regular ‘expert’ guest on the television couch where his expertise as a restaurateur and chef has been called on to talk about a range of topics.

His live work has included a number of UK and International food festivals such as Masterchef Live, Foodies Festivals , Good Food and Wine Shows and Taste Italia where he entertains audiences with his lively yet informative cookery demonstrations.

As a businessman he is the owner of the Caldesi restaurants in London’s Marylebone and culinary mecca Bray in Berkshire. With over 45 years experience in the restaurant business Giancarlo can often be found cooking at the restaurants and entertaining diners with his stories behind the dishes he creates.

In 2010 Giancarlo was awarded the ‘Ordine Della Stelle Della Solidarieta Italiana’ (The Order of Italian Solidarity) by the Italian government as recognition of his work as an Italian chef abroad.

In 2011 he was diagnosed diabetes type 2 and in 2013 with gluten-intolerance. This was a double whammy for an Italian chef but with enormous self-control it led to a massive change in lifestyle and diet which put his diabetes in remission. He lost 4 stone and became fitter than he was a decade previously. This achievement led to further cookbooks on reversing type 2 diabetes.

In the same year Giancarlo was awarded a higher medal – “The Order of the Star of Italy” by the Italian Government recognising his lifelong dedication to promoting Italian food and wine abroad. He is deeply honoured – and very proud.

Favourite Italian recipe
My mother’s lasagne

Favourite place in Italy
Venice

Name three fantasy dinner guests
I would love to cook for Gina Lollabrigida, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Munroe. I would love to meet them face-to-cook out of curiosity, to understand three such iconic women, how they get where they were and to understand their personalities, their magic.