At eight years old Csaba Dalla Zorza he peered into the cupboard of his grandparents’ house in Tuscany, imagining he was drinking coffee from a porcelain cup. “This is for when you get married and come here with your fiance,” replied his grandmother, who thirty years later got the good service out when she met her granddaughter’s husband. But the life of Csaba, writer, food lover and judge of Courtesies for guests, it is not a novel by Liala. Yes, there is the scent of Provence lavender, the rustle of silk skirts, embroidered tablecloths in the drawers of a bourgeois home, but there is also much more. “I am a contemporary woman, a wife, a mother and a professional,” he reveals to FQMagazine, narrating itself in an unprecedented way a few hours after the debut of The Modern Cook, his new cooking program kicks off on Sunday 11 April on Food Network.
Let’s start with Cortesie for the guests, of which he is a judge with the chef Roberto Valbuzzi and the architect Dego Thomas. How was shooting this “Covid edition”?
A bit heavy because the safety parameters are very strict. We already shot the previous one in full pandemic, but since January the production has adopted even more stringent solutions and protocols.
For example?
Trivially, we do twice as many tampons and live in a sort of “family bubble”: both we judges and the crew try to avoid external contacts as much as possible.
Doesn’t it make her strange to enter the house of complete strangers and not be able to hang out with her friends instead?
In part yes, but it is work. I am especially sorry that the emotional part of the program has been cut off: for the competitors it is a unique experience but now we cannot even shake hands when we know each other, hug each other at the end of the shoot or take a group photo.
The virus has also forced you to upset the sets and you have recorded many episodes outdoors, between gardens and terraces, even in the middle of winter. How did you manage it?
It was not managed (he laughs). Looking from home it was not perceived but we had to find solutions, such as having dinner with a blanket on the legs or drinking an extra glass of wine to warm up. In the moments of pause between one course and another we usually remained seated at the table chatting, instead now we have to get up, put on the mask and stay away. This takes away some of the “magic” for the competitors.
It does not take anything away from his ironic and tranchant judgments.
Let’s say that in some respects I am manic. Once, after a few weeks of airing, he recognized me as a little boy on the street and said to his mother: “Look, there’s the lady expert in spoons.” Even today they ask me about my real job.
And what do you answer?
That I’m a cookbook writer on TV.
Many, on the other hand, believe that she is a bon ton expert.
Courtesies for guests has brought out a side that belongs to me but I’m neither an expert on bon ton nor etiquette.
And how has this side refined it?
Reading, studying and cultivating a passion for the table. But I am self-taught, between the ages of 25 and 30 I developed a culture of bric-à-brac, unpaired, fabrics and combinations. There are women who collect shoes, I set plates and tablecloths. I am attentive to good manners and the search for beauty.
Do you remember the audition for Courtesies for guests?
I was impressed by the director’s face when I said: “This table is set wrongly.” The glasses were badly positioned, the spoons were wrong. On my way home, I said to my husband: “Who do you want to care about how the table is set?” Instead they called me for two more auditions and took me.
Why do you think they chose it?
Because I was able to give a different, perhaps curious, meaning to a simple thing. My role in previous editions was not there, at most it was limited to «I like the table, no I don’t like it». I only made people rediscover the desire to pull “good service” out of beliefs.
The most embarrassing episode that has happened to you in recent years of Courtesy for guests and that we have not seen on TV?
The three of us always say that “the most beautiful is cut” – but it’s for stage reasons. Sometimes we are in the midst of family discussions, and it is embarrassing.
From whom did you inherit the taste for the table set comme il faut?
I come from a middle-class family – not a noble one, as I read somewhere – in which she used to make herself well every day. My grandmother and my mother have always kept us at a well-kept table: I’ve never seen paper napkins, so to speak.
By the way: his battle against paper napkins is a granite certainty of Cortesie for guests. Yet after 200 bets the competitors still fall for it.
Partly because they are masochists and partly because they want to be original at all costs. Little by little, however, they are disappearing, while they continue to use tea spoons instead of dessert ones.
What is the pimp’s choice to win his vote?
They understood that I like the tablecloths with lace and embroidery, those of the past. But now they are exaggerating and often wrong by placing optical white plates that are an eyesore.
Answer straight away: aren’t you a bit tired of this “precise” image?
(laughs) No. Because I don’t wear a mask when I go on TV, it’s always me. I dress the same, I comb the same way. Except that I wear a lot less makeup every day.
And is it always so composed?
My kids say I’m less precise on TV than in my private life. I keep myself a bit, otherwise I would risk being even more inflexible.
When it concerns, do you like it?
I don’t always care. That said, I don’t play a role, at most I show a part of myself. I’m sorry that there are people who I thought was stiff, boring, one who doesn’t enjoy life. I always say that those who know the highway code well are the ones who have the most fun when scouring. I am a person who can safely step off the rails and have fun, but I don’t go blind.
What is its dark side?
I don’t think I have one. But like everyone I know how to transgress and do things that no one from me would have imagined. I just don’t tell them around.
Is there a criticism that has bothered you?
No, but it makes me laugh when people think I’m someone who thrives on superficiality and Flanders tablecloths. People think they really know a character by watching him on TV or on social media, while each of us there shows only what he wants.
When did the passion for cooking break out?
I have always cultivated it, even if in different fields. I worked for a long time in editorial marketing and one of my clients was Mondadori, where I took care of the kitchen attachments, from Sale and Pepe to those of Donna Moderna and Sorrisi e Canzoni.
When did the turning point come?
In 2003, at the age of 32. I ended a relationship that had lasted for many years – those of the kind you get engaged as a girl and leave you in adulthood – and decided that I wanted to change my life to realize in my dream of becoming a novelist. But I soon realized it was a risky choice.
And what did he do?
My personal yoga was cooking so, like the protagonist of the film Sabrina, I decided to move to Paris. “If they catch me at Le Cordon Bleu, I really change my life.” I made a request, the letter arrived after a few months and in July I started intensive courses in this important cooking school.
He took a degree in classical French cuisine and changed everything.
In 2004 I published my first book and decided that I would only dedicate myself to the career. Obviously a few months later I met by chance my husband and after 17 years we are still here.
Who was your point of reference?
Abroad the success of Marta Stewart and Nigella Lawson began to explode. I was inspired by them.
In the meantime he has published nineteen books and on Sunday 11 April on FoodNetwork he will debut with his new program, The Modern Cook. How does it work?
It’s another foray into my world. This time I start from an assumption: that today there is nothing more modern than returning to traditional cuisine, made with the help of technology. After the binge of home deliveries and ready meals, in the last year we have rediscovered the value of preparing things by ourselves and taking time for oneself.
In the launch of the program you say: «The beauty of modern cuisine is also that it has no gender: anyone can do it, just want to».
A few days ago, on the radio, a listener told me that it seems that I live in the 1950s, just because I argued that we tend to standardize everything while for me men and women are biologically different and have different attitudes. Then everyone can do everything, of course, and the kitchen is an example.
Do you feel like a woman of the 50s?
No, not at all, I feel very contemporary. But I go beyond stereotypes and politically correct: a woman today cooks because she wants to, not because that is the role established by the patriarchal society. For me, diversity is a positive factor, it nourishes relationships and comparisons in all families.
Even the gay ones?
Sure. I see the family as traditional, but I am also sure that today it can ignore the sex of those who make it up and I am happy to know that those who love each other can marry with a civil union. And I’m not saying this to wink at marketing, as so many famous people do. Indeed, I make an appeal: I would like to open the next Pride, invite me.
What is your idea of the debate on the approval of the Zan bill?
I am for people’s rights. I do not want to have prejudices and I think that whoever considers “different” people as “worse” than himself is a person without intelligence or capacity for acceptance or mercy. Pope Francis is indicating a path of tolerance and universal love that is very current.
Returning to TV: will you return as a judge in the next edition of Bake Off Italia?
Unfortunately I won’t be there this year, I’m a little sorry but that’s how it was decided.
Do you receive more compliments or rude comments on social media?
Fortunately, more beautiful words. I delete obscene or heavy comments, but I enjoy responding to provocations.
What do they ask you?
Why my name is and how can I be so thin. I reply that my name is so because my dad, who was from Veneto, chose it and that I am thin because I have a good metabolism and I kill myself with gymnastics. And then they ask me how I got to where I am.
Or?
They fall into the banality of the woman who arrived on TV because of the usual aids: relatives, friends, lovers. Instead of thinking that a person has made it through their skills, commitment and study, they still fall into the cliché of shortcuts.
His big dream to realize?
Writing a book for the English market and, above all, shooting a program entirely in English on Italian cuisine. When I dream I like to do it big.