If you have any lingering doubts about the bond between culture and cuisine, talk to TV Chef Giovanni Filippone. Giovanni arrived in Bayonne by way of Italy when he was 10 and still relies on his native country for inspiration and comfort.
He attended the Samuel A. Roberson School, which is no longer in operation, and graduated from BHS. After graduation, he worked in a couple of Bayonne restaurants “to get a feel for the business,” including The Big Apple Sports Palace at 412-414 Broadway, now closed, and what used to be Trattoria on 29th Street. He also worked at the Sheraton in the Meadowlands.
“I grew up in a true Italian household around fresh food, homemade pasta, and home-cooked meals,” he recalls. “There was always livestock and a garden in the yard, and my father had fresh vegetables and herbs.”
He and his two brothers were “constantly around food.”
His gigs working at various local restaurants did not turn him off to the business. Far from it. “I was lucky; I loved it, and wanted to do it for a living.” That experience led him to a two-year course of study at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), one of the country’s top training grounds for chefs.
And then it was off to pay his dues as a line cook. “It’s funny, I enjoyed being a line cook more than the head guy,” he says. “It’s more fun—you tell jokes in the back, no one ever sees the kitchen—you can enjoy the cooking aspect without the responsibility of management.”
He’s had varied cooking experiences. “I like to do a little bit of everything,” he says. “I never like to get cornered into one kind of cooking, but when I get in a jam, I fall back on Italian.”
Giovanni, who has cooked just about everything, doesn’t think of himself as a pastry chef. “That’s a whole different animal,” he says. “If you miss a pinch of an ingredient, you have to start all over.”
Though he himself would cook on TV, he doesn’t habitually follow celebrity chefs. But he did tune in to the original Iron Chef from time to time. “I used to watch that,” he says. “They had crazy products and ingredients, something I’d never think about. I like that aspect.”
Small Town to Small Screen
Giovanni had a friend who owned a restaurant in Jersey, but things weren’t going well, so his friend contacted the hit reality show Kitchen Nightmares. The show, which ran from 2007 to 2014, featured terrorist chef Gordon Ramsay trying to save failing restaurants. Giovanni played the chef in the segment.
One thing led to another. “I had no idea who Chef Ramsay was,” Giovanni says. Be that as it may, he soon found himself on Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen, a weekly television cooking competition on Fox in which teams of chefs compete for a job as head chef in a restaurant.
The show is a high-stress food fight of cooking and serving that ends in humiliation, elimination, or jubilation.
“You have to know what you’re doing in the kitchen,” Giovanni says, “and you have to have a great personality.” Meaning? “Crazy and funny, but you have to have talent.”
That’s an understatement. Contestants aren’t informed until five minutes before show time what they will be cooking. Giovanni says they could find themselves doing anything from shucking oysters and throwing pizza dough to preparing beef wellington, fish, steaks, or lamb.
There’s lots of nail-biting. The stakes are high. The winner will be head chef at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, a $250,000 gig. (Sadly, he didn’t win.)
Day Job
When he’s not competing on Hell’s Kitchen, Giovanni is executive chef at Vue on 30A in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Among his pet peeves are online restaurant reviews written, not by professionals, but patrons.
“If you’re going to write a review, never say that you just don’t like the restaurant. Offer constructive criticism. Say what you had and what you didn’t like about it. If the chef has no idea what you didn’t like, he can’t fix it. Tell us your experience. Was it too salty, too dry? If you just say it sucks, that doesn’t help the consumer.”
When he goes to a restaurant himself, he looks for a couple of things. “I like good food and a great atmosphere,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be fine dining. It can be a good slice of pizza. I like having fun.”
Home Town
Giovanni has a perspective of Bayonne that comes from being out of town for almost 14 years. “It’s changed a lot since I was a kid,” he says. “I had a fun time. It was awesome.”
But Bayonne still holds a place in his heart. “It’s evolved and turned into a different place for me,” he says. “The light rail system has been great for business.”
Meanwhile, he’s got a wife and two kids whom they’re raising in Florida—and in the kitchen. “My daughter likes to help mommy in the kitchen,” he says. At Vue on 30A, he’s cooking up Italian, French, and American dishes, “with a twist on Asia.”
He and this lovely waterfront restaurant have won lots of awards.
Just a reminder, Giovanni, there are no beautiful oceans in Las Vegas. Just saying!
Win or lose, Giovanni says, “Cooking is the real joy.”—Kate Rounds.
