Like all great love stories, Margiovanni’s first encounter with pastry making was a happenstance – a series of fortunate coincidences that led him to work in some of the most important kitchens in the world before coming to ALMA, where he is now one of the teachers for the Advanced Pastry Course.
Pastry making, however, had not always been in his plan. After graduating from the Technical Institute, he found himself confused, his mind full of questions rather than answers. At the suggestion of his mother, Margiovanni decided to have his first international experience and refine his English by moving to Australia.
It was during his time working as an assistant at a small Italian pastry shop in Melbourne when his passion for pastry bloomed. Margiovanni attributes this transformative time period for his eventual pursuit of a longstanding career in pastry making.
Shortly afterward, the opportunity arose for an internship at Luigi Biasetto’s Pastry Shop, “a very demanding and at the same time edifying experience; where rigour and the search for perfection determined the stylistic mark of this stage of my career“.
He then moved to Sardinia, to a pastry shop in Porto Cervo, where his awareness and skills further matured as he took on his first laboratory responsibilities: “The environment was smaller and more familiar, ideal for consolidating basic technical knowledge and gaining more confidence“.
The first prominent and high-demanding job that Margiovanni experienced was as pastry chef at the French Bistrot in London under Chef Jason Atherton, where he had to balance restaurant pastry making, managing a complex menu and observing many place settings. The stress and frenetic rhythms of an international fine dining reality then became a constant in his life as he moved with Chef Atherton to the Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social where he stayed for another 8 months.
Thanks to the acquaintances he made in London, the doors of the Marina Social Restaurant in Dubai opened for him, where he arrived during the opening of the new restaurant and worked with Stefano Ferraro, another prodigy of the pastry world.
Once his experienced ended in Dubai, he journeyed to Japan for an internship at the Tokyo branch of the Chocolate Academy. Shortly after, he found himself in Barcelona at the three-Michelin-starred Lasarte restaurant, owned by the great Martin Berasategui and in a brigade of 22 people led by Chef Paolo Casagrande.
He then returned to Italy and Margiovanni did so at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant of the Grand Hotel at Villa Feltrinelli: here, the ambition and passion of Chef Stefano Baiocco captivated Margiovanni, who stayed for three years as head pastry chef of the restaurant.
After much travelling around the world, aware of the enrichment and experience he had gained over the years, the Chef finally felt the desire to stop and give a new form to his love of cooking: teaching. This is how he came to ALMA, with the aim of sharing his knowledge and experience with future generations of pastry chefs and making them the new protagonists of tomorrow.
Favourite dish to taste: Ice cream
Favourite dish to cook: Tiramisu
Cooking in 3 words: dedication, genius and unruliness