Alla Prossima: Whatever you do, don’t skip the tiramisu

20 September 2024

Tiramisu might now be one of Gabriele Marangoni’s signature dishes, but for the Italian chef, eating it is “not really a childhood memory”.

It’s not that tiramisu didn’t feature when he was growing up in Bologna, Italy; there was plenty of it in fact – sponge cake laden with cream and chocolate chips, and soaked through with coffee and liqueur.

So much liqueur, in fact, that the dessert was deemed unsuitable for children until they were aged around 14 or 15.

By that point, Marangoni was already in the kitchen himself. His mum was a chef and he’d started working in the restaurant at 12, cleaning mussels “because I had small hands”.