Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/491440
110 | MAY + JUNE 2015 nshoremag.com in-depth FACES moved with his family at the age of 12 to Venezuela, where he lived until settling in Massachusetts at 21. His experiences in each location, as well as a self-guided transconti- nental food tour, provided the basis and passion for a career in the food world. His childhood home, though not part of a farm, was surrounded by rabbits, chickens, a goat, a pig, a brick oven, and a small but densely packed quarter-acre property full of fruit trees and a vegetable garden. The household was very sustain- able, he notes, well before sustain- ability became a trend. His father gardened and tended to the animals (with the kids' help) and his mother cooked with the resulting bounty. "Growing up in Italy, I learned how to eat," says Ettore. "If you learn to eat well, you have a better chance of learning to cook well." Living this way affected the chef tremendously, and he's committed to re-creating that environment for his own fam- ily as well as his restaurant and neighborhood communities. While studying architecture in Venezuela, at age 19, Ettore began working in the front of the house at a formal, old-school "Ritz Carlton type" Italian restaurant. He contin- ued working in restaurants, includ- ing the Boston Harbor Hotel, after moving to Massachusetts two years later. In the early 1990s, he landed his first job as a chef, at the former Ristorante Rosina in Boston's North End. While there, he decided to embark on an extensive cooking tour in an effort to determine if his calling was a career in the food industry. While backpacking and staying and cooking with friends, he staged (pronounced "staaj") at restaurants in Venezuela, Brazil, Switzerland, Milan, and Tuscany. Stage is the term for a culinary in- ternship, where a chef spends time Ettore grew up in Tuscany and Venezuela. Above, pasta bolognese FOR MORE PHOTOS GO TO NSHOREMAG.COM/ ATAVOLA/