21/09/2026
I asked Anthony Genovese whether he preferred control or surprise.
“Control.”
It caught me because I thought I was almost the opposite.
I wanted the question that makes the air change a little. The one that brings you closer to the person behind the white jacket.
He still feels butterflies before service. But once it begins, he says he lives for giving. For feeding people. For making something happen for them.
I was told he often stands alone in the kitchen and thinks. Looking back at these portraits, that felt right. They are posed, of course, but perhaps they belong to that quieter part of his day.
Despite the name Il Pagliaccio, there is little theatrical about the man I met. A certain shyness. A quiet confidence, shaped by years and movement between places. No pomposity, no need to play the great chef. Then a dry humour slips through with his staff. Warmth. Respect. A side you have to wait for.
I recognised something in that. Maybe not the control, but the instinct to move between different worlds without changing too much depending on who is standing in front of you.
His accent is hard to place. He refuses neat nationality, cuisine, or definition. I understand. I have lived between countries, cultures, families. Italy, the States, London, between things.
There is the reversal. He chooses control, yet allows his identity to remain free. I embrace chaos, yet keep looking for a label that will hold me still.
Maybe control and surprise are not opposites at all. Maybe they are two ways of staying upright. And maybe what I can learn from him is not more control, but giving my identity the freedom I already try to give my life. Anthony Genovese Ristorante Il Pagliaccio
