Wafts of baking fill the air and crowds are gathering akin to a consumer food show. All kinds of savoury and sweet morsels are being passed around to a chorus of appreciation and raised eyebrows. But this isn’t a food show - this is Fruit Logistica. And this is chef Felice Tocchini cooking up a storm and bringing the house down with sweet potato.
The smell of success
Tocchini wanted to be an artist, but he confesses he realised very early on that he was never going to make any money through painting. “I had been surrounded by very good cooks in both my grandmother and mother since I could remember and it suddenly occurred to me that cookery was an art form in itself,” explains the chef, who now owns Worcester restaurants Fusion Brasserie and Fusion with his business partner and wife Fiorinda Tocchini. “When you make your own recipes, adding and taking away this and that, it’s very much like a painting. It’s your own work of art.”
At 14 years old, he took a three-year cookery course at the Ferdinando Martini Catering College in Montecatini Terme and then three years later joined the Royal Shakespeare Theatre restaurants in Stratford upon Avon as a commis, just as British cookery was opening up to different cultures and tastes. Here the Italian cooked for the likes of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, and eventually he was made head chef and then chef manager at the Royal’s Seymour House Hotel. Tocchini stayed there for 15 years before opening his own two restaurants in Worcestershire.
It was from a chance meeting that Tocchini became involved with sweet potato grower and exporter Scott Farms, with the company’s PR team dining in one of his restaurants.
“I fell in love with the passion they had for what they were doing,” says the chef. “Then I met Stan Smith [Scott Farms International CEO] and the passion for the product was incredible. I love to work with people who give 100 per cent. We all want to make money, but this is more than that. This is about sharing a great product, educating people and cooking with it.”
The fresh produce bug
But Tocchini isn’t only cooking with sweet potato; he’s making cakes out of it, serving it raw in salads and turning it into ice cream. This chef is certainly pushing the boundaries when it comes to vegetables.
After all, he’s also the man behind the Brussels sprout cake media circus that was created in the West Midlands back in 2000, as part of a partnership with the British Sprout Growers’ Association. Becoming the association’s honorary chef, Tocchini appeared on TV programmes like The One Show, Countryfile and Midlands Today, and worked with schools promoting fresh seasonal produce and teaching children to cook.
“I knew about the sprout festival in the area, but the promotional drive started out as just a nice idea,” explains Tocchini. “Then all of a sudden there was a list of people invited to the restaurant and an ITV crew turned up. We got three minutes of live primetime at lunchtime and the next day we were being reported on all around the world. Everyone picked up on it. But the association then came apart because the company with the money pulled out of it.”
Tocchini’s passion is for fresh ingredients in general and he’s made sweet potatoes his latest artist’s material because of their versatility.
“The Italian philosophy is fresh and local when it comes to food, but if you can’t get local then it’s got to be the best you can get,” he expands. “Just like you get the best truffles from Italy and the freshest asparagus from Worcestershire, the best sweet potatoes come from North Carolina.
“We have to break down the boundaries when it comes to use of vegetables. Just like we did with the creation of the Brussels sprout cake. The challenge is to get people thinking differently about fresh produce.” -
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