Background

Mattia moved from Italy to the Austrian countryside when he was 3 years old. In his childhood memory, the kitchen was almost constantly busy. The daily baked white wheat bread, the pasta pots and the daily picked ingredients from the local farmers ‘nowadays seem to me as a luxury to have’ Mattia says. His family used to spend much time in the kitchen, especially his mother. ‘She is a very creative person’ he recalls. ‘Her painting and hand skills influenced the way she used to cook’. The distance from the homeland initiated a need to cook traditional food but also allowed to be more experimental. As he got older the family moved back to Italy where he later found his attraction to design

After graduating from I.S.I.A industrial design university in Florence, Mattia moved to Berlin, where he re-discovered his passion for cooking. The distance from home brought him closer to his childhood kitchen in Italy… ‘the engine that brought me to cook is the fact that I was missing the tastes from home’ he says. ‘I was trying to reproduce my memories by creating the same flavour’ – for Mattia, this was and still is a way to reconnect to his culture. 

Work

His design-cooking romance kicked off as he started to produce popup dinners and experimenting with friends. His style of cooking manifests itself by the way he cooks and curates his work; from a meaningful concept based on his Italian roots to the meticulous aesthetics of the dish itself. Among various projects, his work experience as a chef in the restaurant a Tim Melzer’s Bullerei in Hamburg led him to collaborate with ‘Essen & Trinken‘ magazine on food styling photo production where he conceptualised and developed recipes. He currently works in different directions which revolves food and design especially in the context of editorial production.