Editor's note: This interview with Stanley Tucci appeared in the February issue of the Italian print edition of La Cucina Italiana as well as in the Spring 2021 issue of the American print edition.
There was no ice. No cold sugary soda, no kids drinking milk, not even beer was chilled. Eggs and many foods were not refrigerated. These were the surprising impressions Stanley Tucci remembers from that formative year as a 13-year-old boy living in Florence, Italy, during his father’s teaching sabbatical. When he could, Tucci ate pizza and schiacciata, a Tuscan focaccia bread. But mostly, he feasted on his mother’s expanding repertoire of American, Calabrian, and Florentine recipes. In the evening, his parents sent him across the street to buy wine from the grocer.
“The guy had a huge cask with a spigot on it. From that, you’d bring your flask of wine, your fiasco, and that’s what my father would have with dinner,” he says. “You could just do it, because it was assumed you were giving it to your parents.”
On the phone, Tucci sounds as approachable, elegant, and kind as he appears in the spontaneous cocktail videos, watched by millions, filmed at home in London amidst the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. The Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe and Emmy winner speaks with a sonorous and steady voice. He enunciates thoughtfully, while letting his New York vowels stretch from time to time for a pleasing cadence. His respect and enthusiasm for his heritage and the Italian diaspora propel our conversation, from early memories of trying to understand his Italian grandfather speaking Calabrese to hunting down oysters and flavorful vegetables for his home kitchen.
Stanley Tucci (ph Gerhard Kassner / courtesy of RAW CNN)
Few actors can look so at ease or so convincingly distraught in restaurants, dining rooms, and bars on screen. His real-life obsession with cooking comes out in the “foodie” movies for which he is best known, like Big Night (1996), starring Isabella Rossellini and Tony Shalhoub, and Julie & Julia (2009) with Meryl Streep.
Tucci’s latest creation, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, is a CNN Original Series documentary, and unsurprisingly, it’s all about Italian food. In the new series, Tucci eats his way through several of Italy’s 20 regions. In six episodes, shot before and during the pandemic, he travels to Tuscany, Lombardy, Sicily, Rome, Bologna, and Naples and the Amalfi Coast. Tucci, also the executive producer, pitched the idea to CNN.
“One of the things that’s fascinating about Italy is where it’s situated geographically, he says. “If you think about that alone— the influences over millennia, the topography, and the climate, how diverse it is from Lampedusa to the Alps — it’s just staggering. There aren’t many countries that have that kind of diversity.”
Flowing between ancient and contemporary, rural and cosmopolitan, and English and Italian, Tucci investigates familiar and lesser-known dishes and customs. “The series is a little bit to dispel myths, bring clarity, and show people that Italy is not always warm and sunny and all about the sea and tomatoes,” says Tucci, who can’t resist the red fruit, and feels more at home in the colder climate of the north.
Stanley Tucci in Emilia-Romagna (photo courtesy of RAW CNN)
In Lombardy, he enjoys the recipes of the Missoni family, glides through a Milanese aperitivo hour, fishes on Lake Como, and meets an Alpine cheesemaker to taste ancient Bitto. Finally, he reunites with his wife, Felicity Blunt, at an osteria that was once the headquarters for the rail workers’ union.
In the Italian capital, he samples the holy pasta trinity (amatriciana, carbonara, cacio e pepe) then shares an offal lunch with food expert Katie Parla and meets two World War II survivors who have become guardians of Rome’s culinary traditions.
When visiting Florence, Tucci explores the genesis of cucina povera (peasant cooking), goes on a wine bar crawl, attends a threshing festival, and feasts on bistecca alla Fiorentina with his parents.
A pan of cacciucco alla livornese at a trattoria in Tuscany (photo courtesy of RAW CNN)
The experience was incredible, even though the demanding schedule sometimes curbed Tucci’s appetite. “I’m speaking in two different languages, neither of which I speak very well,” he says with self-deprecating charm. “So, by the end of the day, when asked to go out to dinner, you say, ‘Oh! Do I really want to eat?’”
The series concludes in Sicily, where he finds Michelin-starred chef Tony Lo Coco, winemaker Ariana Occhipinti, and Princess Stefania di Raffadali in Palermo. He then travels hundreds of miles to the island of Lampedusa for sardines before arriving near the base of Mount Etna for a few more meals.
Critics will likely compare Tucci to the late chef who founded the TV genre, Anthony Bourdain, who set a high bar for exploring cuisines around the world in CNN’s Parts Unknown. “Bourdain was very much to be admired because he loved food and people and to make those connections. It was really significant what he did,” says Tucci of his late friend. “It’s not dissimilar to what Julia Child did on television, or Keith Floyd, or Nigella [Lawson]. They are really important forces in the food world. They influenced so many people and changed the way we think about food.”
Stanley Tucci in Campania sampling pizza (photo courtesy of RAW CNN)
But after three decades of acting, directing, writing, producing, and sharing countless meals, Tucci is a prolific food storyteller in his own right. In Big Night, the film he directed as a 36-year-old, Tucci played Secondo, a frustrated Italian restaurateur in New Jersey, who serves seafood risotto to a meatball-loving clientele. In these clever scenes of a failing family restaurant, Tucci exposed the tension between art, commerce, and culture, and the pressure on immigrants to assimilate by preparing meals that reflect traditions different from their own. To prepare for his role, Tucci spent 18 months with chef Gianni Scappin at Le Madri, one of Manhattan’s first Tuscan restaurants, which closed in 2005. He studied every mannerism, from the flip of a frittata to the rhythm of a knife dicing garlic. (His parents and Scappin published a cookbook in 1999, featuring recipes from the family and film.)
Decades later, Tucci is still no stranger to professional kitchens. Dropping in on chefs in Italy, like Tony Lo Coco (I Pupi, Sicily), Sarah Cicolini (Santo Palato, Rome), and Fabio Picchi (Cibrèo, Florence), was one of the joys of making the series. “You have to know how to stay out of the way,” he says with a reverence that recognizes the demanding nature of restaurant work. “That’s what is really important. And be deferential and know what they’re doing. It’s almost like you’re walking on stage while a play is going on.” Tucci was comfortable filming in Italian restaurants. However, he admits, “It doesn’t matter if the chef cooked it 40,000 times... You’re supposed to turn it out perfectly every time, no matter what the circumstances are. And those circumstances change at any given night and at any given moment. And that is the most terrifying and exciting thing about being in a kitchen and being a chef.”
Even after a lifetime of exploring Italian food, Tucci cannot name a dish he holds dearer than others, because he cannot take a recipe, chef, or province for granted, nor reduce the cuisine’s diversity to a single favorite. Restaurants, chefs, and family cooks are more than meals. Recipes are more than a cuisine. Cuisine is more than food, it’s the appetites of our ancestors. Tucci’s first wife, Kate Spath-Tucci succumbed to cancer in 2009. Three years later, Tucci completed The Tucci Family Cookbook featuring recipes and photos. Scappin, his parents, and writer Mimi Taft all contributed. In 2014, after he married Blunt, they co-wrote The Tucci Table: Cooking With Family and Friends, featuring recipes that celebrate their English, Italian, and American heritages with recipes from their children. This year, he will publish his first food memoir. For Tucci, food is a muse and the perfect lens for memorializing milestones.
Tucci in Emilia-Romagna digging into a plate of pasta (photo courtesy of RAW CNN)
At home, Tucci takes meticulous care in cooking for and with his family. When schedules allow, they dine together. He adores root vegetables and a newly discovered squash variety called Crown Prince. He cooks with two types of extra-virgin olive oil — from Orvieto and Piedmont — and always has San Marzano canned tomatoes on hand. He splurges on white truffle, langoustines, and bottarga — but he misses restaurants. He vividly remembers the first meal after lockdown at London’s legendary The River Café.
When asked if the new series might give Italian restaurants their own “big night” after the challenges of lockdown, he chuckles. “I suppose in some way,” he says, pausing for a moment. “It’s simply just showing how hard they work, and how necessary they are. That’s really what it’s about. They are necessary in so many ways.” The place doesn’t matter to him as long as people are seated together. It could be a Michelin-starred restaurant, a pub, trattoria, or even a bistro. When people congregate together, friendships start, ideas and emotions are exchanged, and everything feels better. In a world with no restaurants, “we retreat into ourselves.”
In Campania with Enzo Coccia, world-renowned pizzaiolo and advocate for authentic Neapolitan pizza (photo courtesy of RAW CNN)
All pictures are courtesy of RAW CNN