herself »( Roberta Sudbrack, Best Female Chef 2015 in Latin America); « I’ m happy she’ ll be the one to represent us. Bocuse d ' Or tests skills and knowledge under pressure and in little time. Even the best chef can fail, you just need to make one mistake »( Thomas Troisgros, of Olympe in Rio de Janeiro. Thomas is the son of Claude, the brother of Michel, that is to say the person continuing the myth of his father Pierre’ s Maison Troisgros in Roanne, France).
In other words, it seems there’ s no doubt the girl is excellent. We had a different doubt, however: could it be, with that name,“ Giovanna Grossi”… « True, I have Italian origins- she confirms to Identità Golose- The Grossi family comes from the Marche, my grandfather Antonio’ s family lived in San Severino, his father was a farmer. They were then forced to emigrate, like many others, not only Italians( Giovanna’ s mother’ s surname is Mayer, with clear German origins). At the time, Brazil was looking for workers for coffee plantations; so the Grossi family sold all they had and travelled to Sao Paolo. It was very hard, the trip by ship took 30 days. My grandmother told me that one of her two sisters, the youngest, didn’ t make it, she died during the journey across the Atlantic Ocean because the ship was very dirty and there wasn’ t enough food for everyone. Many others shared the same destiny. My granmother’ s and grandfather’ s families already knew each other, they came from the same village; but my grandparents only got married when they were already here, in Brazil. After all, one must remember the largest Italian community outside of Italy is here in San Paulo.
Do you have relatives in Italy? « I know I have an aunt who still lives in Italy but I’ ve never met her. My brother Bruno spent many months in Florence, last year, he’ s also a chef and wanted to learn real Italian cuisine and the