Entering Marcello’s pastry shop is like entering an old bakery, those places we used to visit as children with our grandparents to get an after-school snack, those places that today have been replaced by minimal, radical chic, or Japanese-style decor.
But right at the entrance, expectations clash with reality, because nothing is as you expect: you find yourself in a research laboratory where every single piece, every product on display, is crafted down to the finest detail. Every pastry (and Marcello will forgive us for the naming) speaks of structure and research.
A NECESSARY EVOLUTION
The way we experience pastry shops is changing. The classic Sunday habit of "bringing pastries home" is giving way to the desire for an experience and a story. Today, more than ever, people look for the origin of ingredients, the story behind an ingredient, the uniqueness of an artisanal jam or fruit juice, because perhaps this speaks to us of history, because perhaps this takes us back to our roots. And perhaps a pastry chef’s ability lies precisely in making an experience current while reviving a moment that resurfaces in our childhood memories.
And so, through this journey, we let ourselves be dragged into a whirlwind of scents, from musk to bitter, from mango to pink pepper, because pastry, like art, must be experienced, touched, and tasted, and naturally we did just that.
«My first experience was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. From there, step by step, I started hanging out in the right places, drawn by quality and refined products that weren't available just anywhere.»
HUNGER
That’s pretty much how our chat with Marcello starts, a raw and direct account of his journey, a sensory but also visceral trip between Italy and abroad, through Heston Blumenthal in London all the way to the world-famous Ernst Knam (back when his lab was made up of just four people).
Why someone decides to move like this, to step out of their comfort zone, we can explain in only one way: HUNGER.
The hunger that drives each of us to move, make sacrifices, and do that fucking grunt work, because trust us, everyone did it before you.. And that hunger is what is driving Marcello to transform his laboratory once again, into a training center (we like to call it that).
CHOCOLATE
And now we come to the point that forced us to stay glued to Marcello: chocolate, perhaps one of those ingredients almost everyone agrees on (and in this historical period we are all against everyone, let’s admit it a bit). Marcello guided us through flavors and scents in the creation of an egg, not just a simple chocolate egg because that egg speaks of fragrances, speaks of California, speaks of the Arab world, that scent gets inside you.
Picture it like this: you are at home, maybe with company (we will soon open a column with advice for the heart), you dim the lights, and then you break the egg. But before breaking it, you spray the perfume into the air.
And when you break the egg, the chocolate and the aroma of the spray will fuse together. The fragrance will evolve in contact with the heat of the skin and the palate, just like a high-end perfume. And there, yes, you can truly live and see.
LET'S CALL IT INCLUSION
Perhaps the future of the bar world, like that of cooking and pastry, does not lie in exclusivity, but in making everyone live a worthy experience.
And so, entering a pastry shop that has converted a large part of its production to gluten free (obviously he didn't wake up one morning improvising, he studied, researched, and tested again for a year and a half, because in the end the truth is always there).
“The ultimate goal is to make people feel good through food, offering an experience that is at once a return to the genuineness of the raw ingredient and a look into the future of high-end pastry.”
But all without compromises, without making the intolerant feel like a sick person, without compromise on taste because the customer must not feel any difference compared to traditional shortcrust or cream, and obviously without shouting this process to the world, because in 2026 it should be reality.
Of course we left Marcello with a question mark: it's true there are people intolerant to gluten, but also to milk and eggs (yes, one of us is intolerant and so breaks the c*** a bit), but we are sure we left a seed in his head, which for a figure like him will mean study, study, and more study.
