Giampaolo Caruso
Italian restaurants abroad

Giampaolo Caruso, restaurant manager, was born in Benevento in 1945. The son of a farmer, he decided to leave Italy to learn the secrets of European cookery. He graduated at the hotel-management school of Salerno and, after working in several international restaurants, he decided to open a restaurant where his cooking experience learnt abroad could meet the recipes of his own family.

So he went to Düsseldorf where, into the rooms of a dismissed station, he opened a restaurant that reproduced the customs of Italian farmers. Thanks to good Italian food, customers’ freedom and good prices, the restaurant “Caruso” became very famous in Germany and abroad.

In the interview he tells his life, his experiences, the differences among several ways of cooking and the importance of Italian chefs all over the world. He describes the first quality of Italian products he always used and the difficulties he met to introduce onion into German habits, the same onion that became the queen of his way of cooking. He also quotes famous people that appreciated his dishes: George Clooney, the Kessler twins, Johannes Rau etc. He also recalls the difficult decision to close his restaurant after the State expropriation in order to restore old stations. He concludes his interview with a wish to Italian cuisine: he hopes that every chef could understand the importance of the quality of the product apart from the label.