Master and Apprentice: A Story About Wine and Great Chefs

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What makes a great chef great?

What makes a great athlete, a great artist, a great scientist? What makes anybody great at any job? Do they have a distinctive ability for the job? Do they have an ideal energy for the job? Do they meet somebody who recognizes their energy and cultivates their ability?

This is the first chapter in the story about a master and an apprentice. A great chef who was the first teacher of a great chef who became a star. The master was my father, Chef John Marangelli, who had restaurants on Capitol Drive and 24th Street, at the Brown Port Shopping Center, in a Bay View hotel and at what was the Firstar Center in Downtown Milwaukee. The star is Chef Paul Bartolotta, whose experience at great restaurants of Italy, France and North America, including his own, has guided the founding, building and operating of the Bartolotta Restaurant Group.

My father’s passion for food and wine also inspired me. One of the wines which changed my life was a bottle he introduced me to over a midnight dinner at his Brown Port restaurant. A 1982 Tenuta San Guido Bolgheri Sassicaia. A great vintage of a great wine. A bottle which made me realize the power of wine to metamorphose you.

On Thursday, Nov. 2 at Ristorante Bartolotta in the Village of Wauwatosa, Chef Bartolotta will offer a tribute to the culinary mastery of Chef Marangelli with an evening of great food, great wine and great stories. Like all great stories about teachers and their disciples, this story ends with the disciple becoming the teacher. 

This is the first chapter of that great story. Paul Bartolotta narrates the chapter, which features him as a 16-year-old in Wauwatosa and John Marangelli as the chef and owner of his Brown Port restaurant. 

“I was working at the Chancery, and I told my dad, ‘I think I want to be a chef.’ So, I started looking at the want ads, and I see this: Working apprenticeship for master continental chef. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, so my brother Joe drove me out there.’

John is like, ‘You should pay me to apprentice, because in Europe, when you apprentice, you pay to learn your craft.’

I say, ‘You’re not going to pay me?’

‘You have to work for free if you want to be a serious apprentice.’

And I’m like, ‘No. Thank you.’

So, I go home, and I’m sitting at the family table, and my dad is like, ‘Well, how’d it go?’

‘The guy wants me to work for free. I mean, are you kidding me? I’m making $2.45 an hour at the Chancery, and this guy wants me to work for free? That’s crazy.’

‘How was the interview?’

‘Oh, he’s a really interesting guy. He told me some stories about how it works in the old country. But this isn’t the old country. This is the new world. We pay people here.’

‘How did it end?’

‘It ended with me telling him I’m not going to work there.’

Two days later, I’m at the table again with my dad, and I say to him, ‘Can you believe that guy? I mean, the gall of him to ask me to work for free.’

My dad is like, ‘Why are you still talking about it?’

‘Because,’ I say, ‘I kind of was interested.’

‘Then go talk to him.’

So, Joe drives me back out there again, and I talk to John, and he says, ‘I can’t pay you. I won’t pay you. I need to make sure you’re serious about really wanting to be my apprentice. I’m not hiring somebody to work in my kitchen. I’m hiring an apprentice.’

I said, ‘Let me think about it.’

And as I’m walking out the front door, he says to me, ‘Don’t think about it. Come here for a few days next week. See if you like it. See if you’re interested.’

And I was like, ‘OK.’

This chapter of the story ends in next month’s Shepherd Express, as John teaches Paul one of the most valuable lessons of his culinary life.