A question that they often other chef ask to me:
How to become a successful “Chef”?
I would say a question not easy to answer, the same question as the one that make you: how do you get rich ??
On this question I can answer you more easily: when you will understand the real value of the money ! Because you are the person who gives the value to that piece of paper.
To make it easier to understand there are people who have $1,000 and feel rich and then others who have $1million and feel poor what does it depend on ??? Depends on yourself, you give the value to the money is not money make your value.
I started working in the kitchen when I was 11 years old because it was the
only thing I could do!! The region? I was never interested in
studying, so instead of using the brain I decided to use my hands!
I assure you that when I started it was not to become a successful
chef but it was just to survive.Then at a certain point I started to enjoy looking at the faces of my customers who tasted & enjoy my dishes then gradually became an
indispensable thing for me. (I think it's a same feeling that all chef have when start work in the kitchen)
After few year I got lucky with the mass media and the people around me who gave me lot of support & introduce me to all Japanese market.
Actually to me was not seem true because I was full of work between
events, magazines, television show etc.
I worked like crazy because that kind
of success was never enough and become a drug for me...
In short i can said I was a star chef.
Until one day for a Heath problem I had to stop and leave everything improvisley and at this point all the people who surrounded me who
made me feel a star are gone because when you stop media you are no longer make sense to the people around you for other interests.
(Except for someone who is still close to me now)
Can said real and unique experience from the stars to the stables,
wake up one morning and realize that you not anymore a star, lose all your money, family, friend and physically the strength to fight and get to the point of attempting "suicide"
(today is not a rare thing for us chefs)....
Fortunately, the few good people who had remained close to me decided to send me back to Italy (Napoli) where I stay for 2 years a period that really made me grow,
reflecting and thinking and then understanding the true value of
other things, life and then also I learn to stay alone, I know is a
very sad but very important thing for me since I was a person who could not be alone (I always had to be surrounded by others)
And at the end, reflecting the thing that had made most suffer is:
having neglected my family my Kidd's and then saying that I was doing it for them...when in reality it was only for myself!
I hope that for those who are reading this blog at the moment and aredoing the same thing slow down immediately and begin to think a
little .. even if you make a lot of money and become successful, the only thing you can never buy will be "time", so think about this very well.
The mass media is an important thing to introduce your self to the public but it's something you need to know how to use and not be used
After my return to Japan I decided to concentrate on the my real job and try again the feeling I felt at the beginning:
make my customers happy and not myself!!
What is the real fame ??
Being a TV star??
Being qualified by a guide ??
Being awarded as the best restaurateur ???
Become the world champion ??
A Guinness record ??
Become a UNESCO heritage ???
To have 100 restaurants ??
Well I have all this but it's not my success!! My success is
my clients, my family, my staff, this is my real success!!
One day when you realize what you are doing was something that only served to neglect your customers, your family because the success you think will keep you very busy....will be too late.
At the end of the story you have to be the one to decide what success means to you.
Do not be killed by fame because it's same like drug !!
ps/: I have not written all this to tell you I'm famous chef or I am a happy person on the contrary, I am unhappy with all the mistakes I have made in the my past.
I'm try only to share experiences that I hope none of you will pass same like me.
It's never too late don't forget your roots. "Chef"
"Sorry for my spelling errors because English is not my main language"
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Published by Salvatore Cuomo
Salvatore Cuomo was born in Naples, Italy, in 1972, son of an Italian father and Japanese mother.
Cuomo was first inspired by his father who also was an Italian Chef in Naples. He began at the young age of 11, where he trained himself in the kitchen and traveled frequently between Italy and Japan. He gradually learned how to blend the traditional Italian art of cooking with the Japanese art of perfection.
A few years later he traveled to Japan with his father who opened an Italian restaurant in Chiba in 1984. About those early years Salvatore told the press that it wasn't a good starting experience: "I didn’t like Japan at all, so after one year, I went back to Italy and spent 2–3 years studying at a culinary school. When I was 18, I returned to Japan after my father became terminally ill and I have been here ever since."[3] Cuomo said that Italian Cuisine was just starting to get popular in those days. He and his two brothers decided that in order to succeed in the restaurant business in Japan they would have to understand the Japanese food mentality. They spent a couple of years researching the market before opening a new restaurant in Tokyo with what Cuomo calls "Original Neapolitan pizza."
Since that time, Cuomo has been credited with catapulting Neapolitan pizza to fame in Japan, and today in all Asia with over 100 restaurant.
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