Sow in the storm

This article is published in number 21 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until May 25, 2021

Mrs. Bruna trained her attitude to see the glass half full by looking at the string of half-empty bottles that were lined up on the shelves of the Da Vittorio restaurant bar, of which she had found herself, by chance and for love, to be the proud owner.
It was 1966, she and her husband, that Vittorio of the sign, had a small child, one on the way, many dreams and many debts.

And those already open bottles, which the alcoholic representative had given him on loan for the inauguration, taking them from another place (“come on, you will pay them when you finish them”), were the symbol of many things: that in life you have to always help each other, always throw yourself in and always struggle. Fifty-five years later Ms. Bruna claims that she has not doubted those three certainties even one day, not even in one of those terrible and recent days in which her city paid the highest price to the pandemic and the horizon, “especially to the my age, I’m 80 », it had the look and feel of a reinforced concrete wall. “We always made it, I knew we were going to make it this time too,” he says.
It is a Wednesday after the return to life and the outdoor tables of the Da Vittorio restaurant – which moved from Bergamo to the countryside, to Brusaporto, obtained three Michelin stars and has 160 employees – are full. The Cerea family, mother and five children, have a choreography refined over the years: Enrico and Roberto in the kitchen, Rossella in the dining room (which in this cautious reopening phase is the garden), Francesco momentarily among the tables recommending wines, Bruna a little ‘greets those who arrive, a little’ is in his kingdom, the box. Barbara, the other daughter, takes care of the Cavour pastry shop opened in the center of Bergamo, and of charity.
Vittorio has been gone since 2007. “He left at the most difficult economic moment in our history, knowing him he must have done it on purpose, to see if we could have managed it”, says Bobo, chef, who could have become a judoka professional but, like all the other brothers, he then chose to stay and work with his family.
The destinations are said to have been made on the basis of body size: the strongest in the kitchen, the most agile around the tables and the world, but the truth is that everyone has naturally found their way. Even as children they helped everyone: Bruna remembers their satchels thrown behind the counter and them getting busy in the room. A hand was always needed because the restaurant never closed. He says: «We decided to rest for the first time in 1972, eight years after opening. We established that the day off was Wednesday. The boys went to school and Vittorio and I played ping pong, then when they returned, we turned the table and all set to eat together. And then we would take out the rackets again. We took our first holidays like this: Vittorio was 40 years old ». Enrico, known as Chicco, chef, remembers the afternoons cleaning prawns and baby octopus (his father had decided that, in that meat-eating land, he had to mix, and then: fish, mushrooms, truffles) while his friends went to play football and at parties. “At the beginning it was difficult, but Mom and Dad knew how to reward us for the work we did. Then, after years of cleaning fish and pans, I went into the kitchen and everything – the efforts, the sacrifices – made sense. I learned the most beautiful job in the world and gratification became what I saw in the eyes of the people who tasted my dishes. What I couldn’t do as a boy – sports, have a little fun but not too much – I did when I grew up. Everything except the vet, which was my dream. “
In the list of wishes left there, there is Francesco’s wish to live far away, perhaps in Australia. The compromise he found is to take care of all the external activities of the brand, above all the events and parties. Out of discretion he doesn’t tell much, but a couple of things do: «Queen Elizabeth who asks three times for” a taste “of yellow risotto and then between one and the other goes to change her hat. And Barack Obama who wants an encore of cannoncini ». In the year of forbidden gatherings (and therefore of forbidden events), Francesco imagined new things: pizza and grill by the pool under the restaurant, a Berber tent on top of the hill, consultancy, cooking schools, the agreement with the Atalanta stadium. «In the midst of the storm we tried to sow», says Enrico, «sure that sooner or later everything will start again for real». And so the second Da Vittorio restaurant in Shanghai and the Splendido restaurant in the piazzetta in Portofino were born. But in the storm the Cerea brothers also made another type of sowing, the one whose fruits are for everyone: they made available the rooms of the Relais & Chateaux La Dimora (where the restaurant is) for employees who fell ill with Covid, they managed the canteen of the field hospital set up by the Civil Protection and they stored and distributed the food that many companies donated in those first months of the pandemic. «There is nothing to say, it was what had to be done», comments Enrico. In addition to the superfine palate, Vittorio has passed this into his DNA: that if there is a need, he gives himself. “He was a generous man, even in small and almost ridiculous things. I remember him with the pot of pasta on the beach in Laigueglia: he was tired of eating sandwiches, so he cooked at home and took to the sea. He distributed food to all the bathrooms »recalls Roberto.
They still go to Laigueglia, all together, even with their grandchildren. In total there are 24. “We also live in the same house in Bergamo, everyone has their own apartment, mine is the most beautiful of all,” says Bruna, who knows she is the pivot of this branched equilibrium in which even the daughters-in-law and genders have become part of it “as if they were my children”. No one seems particularly surprised by this symbiosis, everyone admits that it is not always an idyll but “we are wrong together and we work together,” says Rossella, whose husband is one of the chefs. They have three children who are a piece of that third generation (in total there are 13) who are partly studying to follow family matters and partly not. Mrs. Bruna says: «My children did not go to university, but the grandchildren I demanded that they study. One can no longer be ignorant nowadays. I didn’t study, I was selling fruit and vegetables in my dad and mom’s shop. Then, when Vittorio and I fell in love, I helped him in his family’s bar: he roasted at home and then took the pot to the shop and gave it to the customers. One thing that if you do it now they arrest you, but no one ever died“. She says that the most unthinkable thing that happened to her was flying to Shanghai, for the opening of the restaurant that bears the name of the man she has loved all her life and who has loved her again, and everyone, in the way she knew: feeding them. «For us, food is a form of love», says Enrico, «a way of making others feel good and also ourselves. When I cook I forget everything, as if doing were a meditation and a prayer. If I have thick thoughts, I start turning the potatoes: making them all the same puts order inside me. When they see me with the peeler in my hand, here they all understand that they have to stay away from me “.
Before returning to her accounts, Signora Bruna has something to tell me: «All my life I have written checks like Bruna Cerea. My real name is Gioconda Gritti, but I Gioconda Gritti don’t even know who she is. I’m Bruna Cerea and I had a happy life, and I still have a dream: that everything will continue like this ».

PHOTO: GIACOMO BRETZEL AND IACOPO MANFREDI

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