history

The story of the Uliassi restaurant could only start like this… Everything began with a dad, Franco Uliassi peasant farmer, who didn’t want to be a peasant farmer and so he became a lorry driver to escape the grim life of working the land in the 1950s. As we know, lorry drivers travel all around Italy and they stop off for lunch or dinner at the restaurants they find along their way. It was in one of those restaurants that he met our mother, Bianca Maria Bartolacci, the waitress and a daughter of restaurant owners who were in turn the children of innkeepers. It was love at first sight. As the price to pay for his love, dad decided (despite his regret) to give up his adventure on the road and launched into a new one, a cafe', which he bought and opened together with Miss Bartolacci – who in the meantime had become Mrs Uliassi. Their three children (Mauro, Walter and Catia), the fruit of their love, grew up in the typical environment of a business serving the public, but they cultivated their own personal interests and pursued different dreams, as children often do. Mauro went to a technical-vocational school (it seemed the word “electronics” was the only one he was interested in). Walter attended the Italian Air Force College and flying is still the thing he loves best. Catia, too, went to a technical-vocational school to study information technology. Mauro discovered that the programme for industrial technicians wasn’t all he’d expected it to be. He had a great time at school (these were the years of student protest and other kinds of commotions) but he couldn’t get his head around The'venin's Theorem and its logarithmic calculations. And there were no girls! Two thousand pupils and a “school” of teachers, but all of them male down to the very last one. He left school halfway through the third year. Mauro dreamed of travelling hippy-style; he wanted to give everything up and set off on his wanderings. With tears in his eyes, his father advised him to at least try something else. In the end, Mauro changed his mind and decided to try again. He chose a catering and hospitality training school. He took to it like a duck to water. It was so different from that dismal technical school; now he could eat, drink and be merry and … there were bevies of girls, girls galore! Four years, including completing two years in one, and a variety of work placements in the tourist industry, first as a barmen in clubs and discos, then as a cook in Italian and French restaurants and hotels. But his first real experience of kitchen work (hard, very hard!) was with cordon bleu chef Lucio Capannari, who shut him up in the kitchen for six months, eighteen hours a day, without even one day off. Mauro still wasn’t fired with a passion for cooking and as soon as he got his school-leaving certificate he turned his back on the kitchen and headed to university. An undergraduate sociology programme at the University of Urbino and seven exams under his belt, then … he met Chantal, his future wife. Caught up in the wonders of romance, he realised how much he enjoyed giving pleasure to others through food by cooking for Chantal and their friends. He donned his toque once again, but with a new awareness and a passion for research and experimentation. At the same time, he joined the Panzini catering and hospitality school of Senigallia to teach cooking techniques and confectionary. He started studying seriously, he did several courses and began visiting and eating in great restaurants. He met other chefs, gained more experience and acquired an even greater fervour to cook and express himself through cookery. Then came the restaurant. He was lucky enough to whip it away from under the nose of another potential buyer, a millionaire, by making an offer that was just a little bit higher...