Xier: Carlo Scotto’s eccentric masterpiece

Although disappointed to not receive a star, Carlo and his team are bolstered by public opinion and are confident that they’re on the right track. Carlo himself knows a thing or two about Michelin star-level cooking – he had lengthy spells with Angela Hartnett at Murano and as sous chef at Galvin La Chapelle with Jeff Galvin before opening Xier. Both became important mentors to the young chef: ‘Chris and Jeff (Galvin) are both incredible,’ he says. ‘I worked mostly with Jeff. He had an amazing work ethic – he would be in the kitchen at 8am prepping with us, no matter what. I’m very proud and honoured to have cooked with him.’ Angela, he says, was the first chef who really helped him unlock his creativity. ‘I don’t think Angela really knows what she did for me,’ he continues. ‘I think before I got to Murano I was holding a lot back – she taught me to release the person I really was.’

The Carlo I met is engaging and affable with a mischievous sense of humour, but things have not always come so easily to him. As a young boy growing up in Naples he suffered a terrible tragedy – Carlo lost his brother at a very young age, and the effect was profound. ‘It was a very dark time,’ he says. ‘I was only six or seven years old – to see my mum going through that was very difficult. My family was grieving and they couldn’t look after me, so I became a very troubled kid.’

Carlo felt he had to fend for himself and fight for his own happiness, so at just thirteen years old, he found a job in the kitchen of Don Salvatore – a popular Michelin-starred restaurant near the coast at Mergellina, just outside Naples. Head chef Salvatore wasn’t interested at first, but Carlo convinced him to take him on, fuelled by a desire to prove himself and to belong. ‘I asked for a job and he told me he wasn’t interested,’ says Carlo. ‘I took that as a challenge. Everything I did, I had to do it at my best, even if it was just brushing the floor.’

Soon, Salvatore’s young charge was beating him into the kitchen every morning. ‘Chef was always the first in the kitchen,’ he continues, ‘so I had to be in before him.’ Carlo’s resolute determination eventually won his chef over – Salvatore took him under his wing and the kitchen at Don Salvatore became his home: ‘The shouting, the bleeding, the tears that I saw, it was nothing for me,’ Carlo explains. ‘Putting my chef jacket on was easy because life at home was difficult – the kitchen became my safe place.’