On 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl travels to Modena, Italy, birthplace of opera legend Luciano Pavarotti and chef Massimo Bottura. Stahl calls Bottura “the Pavarotti of Pasta.” Bottura and his wife opened their first restaurant, Osteria Francescana, in the medieval city centre of Modena in 1995. Osteria Francescana is now a Michelin-three-star restaurant and was ranked No 1 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants (2018). The 56-year-old Italian chef is married to Lara Gilmore, a native of Washington, D.C. When they met in New York, she was a vegetarian. When he brought her to Modena, she says, “he put a plate of cold cuts in front of me and said ‘Welcome to Modena.’ I realized I had to dive in or I wasn’t going to have any fun.”
Bottura and Gilmore founded the nonprofit organization Food for Soul, which launched the Refettorio Ambrosiano, a soup kitchen that uses quality and in-date ingredients that are perfectly edible but would otherwise go to waste. Their book Bread is Gold (see link above) is a cookbook of recipes from the Refettorio Ambrosiano. There are currently four Refettori — in Milan, London, Paris, and Rio de Janiero. 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7pm on CBS.
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