PORTRAIT
12
this is just the right place to do it.
All of the materials are from
my home town, Mattinata in the
Apulia region of Italy; the stone on
the walls and floor is from a quarry
in the immediate surroundings
and the wood is from my family’s
groves, where we have 7,000 olive
trees from which we produce olive
oil. The tree in the middle of the
room here is one I had dug up and
brought here.
FF: So it’s only the chairs which aren’t
Italian…?
MF: We found them in Germany, and I
like them because they swivel and
are very comfortable – so comfort-
able, in fact, that you can eat an
eight-course meal and still feel
relaxed in them. They look very
contemporary, too, and so suit my
culinary approach.
FF: You’ve worked with top chefs such
as Eckart Witzigmann and Dieter
Fast wie ein Testlabor scheint die Küche,
die nur mit Glasfronten vom Gastraum
getrennt ist. / The kitchen, separated
from the dining room by nothing more
than a glass wall, almost has the air of
a laboratory.
Koschina: how do you go about
developing new flavours. Is it
like a perfume-maker imagining
new aromas and then trying them
out?
MF: We’re past the stage of needing
to experiment endlessly: we now
have the training necessary, so all
I need is my imagination. In my
case, I tend to have new ideas
spontaneously, while I’m working –
even if I then go on to change them
