A Hundred Years of Filippino restaurant
Parri, Monet and Magnani
A hundred years of "Filippino"
There were Ferruccio Parri and Carlo Rosselli, political prisoners during the Fascist era. Once the painter Claude Monet ordered, ate, but at the moment of the account he realized to have no money and he paid with a design path there on a paper tablecloth. There were often actresses, actors and famous directors such as Anna Magnani, Sofia Loren, Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni. Occured also a boxer Primo Carnera, who got irritated and with his fist he broke a table in two. They come and go TV star of all time, Mike Bongiorno and Pippo Baudo, Alba Parietti and Maria De Filippi, and musicians such as Sergio Celibidache and Giuseppe Sinopoli and the archaeologist piedmontese who wrote the story of the origins of the Aeolian Islands, Bernabò Brea.
How many stories, and how much history come alive in the book A hundred years of Filippino, celebrating the century of the life of one of the few famous Sicilian restaurants in the world and the visionary genius of its founder, Filippo Cesare Bernardi, from Macerata of the Marches: landsman, who came to Lipari in so adventurous way in 1910, aboard a sailing ship, and remained there forever also for the love of his wife Maria Luisa from Lipari.
A little room on the place of the Civita, on top of the village and Castle-prison in which the confined had a bed and the few things bring from home; four tables that even in winter, weather permitting, were stowed outdoor; the poor menu due to the times of famine and abandonment in which were the islands, but there were never lack of fresh fish, vegetables just cultured, hot bread oven and homemade sweets. Filippo Cesare, for all Filippino, and Maria-Luisa began like this, with "willpower, hard-working family, love for own work and passion for life", as they remember their grandchildren, Antonio and Lucio, today at the head of a family dynasty that includes already the fourth, and soon also the fifth generation.
If to Filipino goes the merit of founder and having convinced his son Filippo junior that loved most sea and adventure, to devote himself to the kitchen, to Antonio and Lucio it is recognized to have strengthened and consolidated a family tradition of great level, with the style of the father and the grandfather. Lucio in the kitchen (and sometimes on television to explain the aeolian recipes), Antonio in dining room, with watchful and severe’s mother eye, Eugenia Matarazzo, dead centuries-old a few weeks ago, and the method that in their house handed down from father to son: attention and kindness with all, the important guest that made the history of the restaurant and the people of every day, and from Lipari with the face roasted by the Sun that facing smiling in this book of affectionate memories.
Saturday, October 23 - "A Hundred Years of Filippino restaurant"
Lipari - 2010 is a year that provides an historical birthday for the Italian restaurant industry. The restaurant "Filippino," local historian of Lipari celebrates his first century of activity. Restaurant belonging to the circuit of the great local of the tradition of Mediterranean cuisine, "Filippino" proposes from 1910 the typical flavours of aeolian and sicilian cuisine. Born by the will of Filippo Cesare Bernardi that started the history of the local to the early twentieth century (when it was still called "Belvedere"), "Filippino" has seen seated at his tables, figures and celebrities who have made the history of Italy and not only. From Monet (who paid the bill with a picture), to Paola di Liegi, to Edda Ciano, from the movie stars of the film after the war to the former President of the Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.
Personalities and exceptional presences enchanted by the quality of the flavours and by the cuisine of the restaurant, but also by the unique setting in which "Filippino" is inserted. Lipari and the Aeolian Islands are considered a true natural paradise, an enchanted environment where the sea, the green and the volcanic nature of the archipelago create a unique landscape mix. Today the restaurant is managed by Antonio Bernardi, a direct descendant of Filippo Cesare, so as his brother Lucio “chef” now internationally renowned, and together they work to ensure continuity of tradition and authenticity of the flavours that from 100 years the famous local offers. A century of taste, a century of quality, a century of professionalism. A century of "Filippino."
Filippino’s restaurant was like a royal palace. It Stood (and still does) on the open ground in front of the town hall, almost up against the threshold of the acropolis, where the civilisation of centuries and millennia would arrange to meet for a synthesis of time that would become history. Filippino was a symbol, a name that drew so many things together: a tradition of family industry, a desire to take life on, a love of one’s work, a rigour in professional ethics, an indefatigability in sacrifice, a respect for others and one’s own person, a protection of personal dignity, a desire to travel a pathway almost for a silently held wish not to end there. In sum, a passion for living. They were all virtues and as a boy he realized this little by little. In those years professor Bernabò Brea indeed demonstrated that the world came from far away bringing the most ancient civilisations to light with the excavations that started from Piano Conte to finish who knows where.
The piano notes of Sergiu Celibidache assisted the moving beauty of a nature that from every viewpoint opened to hope: they were the landscapes that a Swiss tourist who never again detached himself from the island, Edwin Hunziker, entrusted continuously to his lovely painting; in the evening, the ditties of Ciccio Mondello would accompany the thrills of love of the first holiday makers arriving from France, from Germany and from Holland. But everything, absolutely everything was as if it revolved around the "restaurant" that each evening in summer took on the air of a "succulent" conversation club, an appointment which it was impossible not to keep, to exchange and hear the day’s news, the confidences, the curiosities and the comments. Filippino moved among the tables with the familiarity of a demiurge who knows what guests expect of him, like a friend who knows the art of confidentiality and the limits of discretion. The boy looked up to him and learned. Everything can be learned from everybody. Once the boy spoke of Lipari to a Greek archaeologist and he asked him if he wanted to accompany him. After the archaeological visit we will lunch at Filippino’s - the boy told him. You who have travelled so widely will realise that you find yourself in one of the best restaurants in the world.