Italian chef Filippo La Mantia began his professional life as a news photographer covering Mafia crimes in Palermo, the city in which he grew up. But his life took an unexpected twist in 1986 when he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for involvement in the murder of a policemen. He was 26 years old at the time.
Eventually cleared of charges with the assistance of anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone (who was later assassinated), La Mantia says that the time he spent in Ucciardone, Palermo’s notorious jail, changed him forever, because it was there that he learned to cook.
His story has inspired a book, Maqueda, by Salvo Sottile, and a movie, Tutte le donne della mia vita.
La Mantia is now the owner of the ultra-hip Trattoria Restaurant in Rome (Via del Pozzo della Cornacchie 25, phone 06 683 01427) and he’s recently been getting a lot of press for joining the ranks of Italian chefs who choose not to use garlic in their food, choosing other natural ingredients such as citrus and herbs instead.
Like others who have joined the anti-garlic bandwagon, La Mantia says that garlic smells horrible and that it overwhelms delicate flavors. He claims that garlic is a leftover from the era when Italians were poor and needed something powerful to add flavor to their modest meals. Now, he claims, most Italians can and should afford to do without it. He gives his point of view explicitly on this CNN video.
His antigarlic movement has a powerful ally in former Premier Silvio Berlusconi whose has a well-known aversion to the stinking rose. Carlo Rossella, a news director for Berlusconi’s Mediaset has even started a list of garlic-free restaurants and is pushing for places that serve garlic to have separate, garlic-free menus.
But not all Italians are in agreement. Last year Italians ate 108 million pounds of garlic in 2006, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. And for some the snubbing of garlic is seen as culinary snobbery. Talking with NPR reporter Sylvia Poggioli, a vendor at the Campo dei Fiori outdoor market (whose stall features long braids of garlic nestled among colorful fruits and vegetables) asked, “What are we supposed to eat, shallots? Will that make us more elegant? More French?”
