Master & Apprentice: A Story About Wine and Great Chefs – Part Two

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Chef Paul Bartolotta of the Bartolotta Restaurants won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Midwest at Spiaggia in Chicago in 1994. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southwest at Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare at the Wynn Las Vegas in 2009. He has worked alongside some of the world’s most acclaimed chefs, including Paul Bocuse and Roger Vergé, and at some of the world’s most acclaimed restaurants, including La Maison Troisgros and Taillevent. As a young, aspiring chef in Milwaukee, Paul learned his most valuable culinary lesson as an apprentice for Chef John Marangelli, my father.

On Thursday, Nov. 2, 6 p.m. at Ristorante Bartolotta in Wauwatosa, Paul is offering a tribute dinner to John Marangelli. Paul will host the dinner, which will serve John’s classic dishes as Paul describes how he evolved into one of the world’s great chefs. (For more information about the dinner, please go to the Bartolotta’s Restaurants website at bartolottas.com/ristorante-bartolotta/events/a-tribute-dinner-chef-john-marangelli.)

As Paul begins the story, the first couple of months as an apprentice in John’s kitchen didn’t suggest a path to glory. 

“John would say, ‘There’s an order here for Chicken Caruso’ (a classic Marangelli dish). And he starts putting all of the ingredients on a plate. So, I took out my little notepad. I wrote down exactly what the ingredients were, and roughly how much of them there were. Another order comes in. It’s Cappuccini ai Fettucini (another classic of the Marangelli kitchen). He shows me how to cut the beef medallion. He never let me cut the meat because it was too expensive, and he was afraid I was going to mess it up. But I would get all of the other ingredients ready. And every time an order would come in, I would set the plate. I’d have all the ingredients to make the dish on the plate. And then he’d tell me whether it was a cast iron pan or a sauté pan or whatever he was going to make the dish in.

“So for six months I washed his pans, and I prepped his plates, and I watched him cook, and I plated his dishes, and I tasted them. But I never cooked anything. And I was frustrated. I said to my dad (the great Milwaukee opera and theater impresario Tudy Bartolotta), ‘I never get to cook anything. I’m just a glorified dishwasher.’

“My dad asks, ‘How’s the food?’

“‘Oh, the food’s amazing!’

“‘How do you know?’

“‘Because I get to taste everything. I taste everything before it goes out.’

“So one night, the waiter puts in the first order. I prepare the plate and heat the pan. The waiter puts in another order. I prepare the plate and heat the pan. And John walks off the line in the kitchen, lights himself a cigarette, pours himself a cup of coffee and grabs a chunk of Ambrosia chocolate. The waiter puts in a third ticket, and says, ‘Hello? These people want to have dinner tonight.’

“John says to him, ‘Paul’s cooking tonight.’

“I’m like, ‘No, I’m not. I’ve never made a single dish.’

“‘Paul, you know how to make them. What’ve you been doing here for six months?’

“‘I’ve been washing your pots and pans and prepping your plates.’

“The waiter puts in another ticket, and I say, ‘John!’

“And he says, ‘Paul, cook the goddamn food.’

“And as soon as I started putting oil in the pan, I realized that every time he was making a dish, I was standing right next to him, watching him. And I knew exactly how to make every dish. And I knew exactly how every dish should taste.

“I learned from John the most valuable culinary lesson of my life. If I have any one gift that puts me at a very high place in the culinary world, it’s that I have an ability to make delicious flavors. There are chefs that are more technical, and there are chefs that are more creative, but I think the whole game is won on taste, and my flavors stand with anybody’s. Not everyone may like my taste, but I have clarity of taste.

“And I created a formula that I use when I do speaking engagements. John taught me that the balance of ingredients, plus cooking time, plus cooking temperature, equals taste. He understood that magic. And that was his greatest gift.”

A Lesson for Wine Lovers

“Cultivate your palate!”

That was my father’s seven-syllable dictum. My father was Chef John Marangelli, and his dictum asks you to cultivate your palate for wine, as well as food.

Cultivating your palate means asking more of yourself. It asks you to mistrust wines with big, easy, smooth aromas and flavors. The kinds which ask nothing of you. The kinds which talk at you. Cultivating your palate asks you to look for wines with aromas and flavors which challenge you. The kinds which ask you to talk with them. 

I think of cultivating your palate like the kinds of people you might meet at a dinner party. 

You may meet somebody who talks a lot and makes you laugh. He speaks loudly and turns every subject into a story about him. He asks nothing of you. Then again, he leaves you with nothing to say. If he were a wine, you’d leave the party weary.

You may also meet somebody at the party who challenges you, who leaves you shifting in your seat, who hears what you have to say. She asks questions of you. She makes you ask questions of yourself. She speaks softly, and what she says is charged with energy. If she were a wine, you’d talk deep into the night.