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Gigi recalls: “At Ferrari I started with Jody and Gilles, then Pironi, Tambay, Arnoux, Michele
Alboreto, Johansson, Berger, Prost, Mansell, Alesi, Morbidelli arrived. Then, when I moved to
Benetton, I served Schumacher”. “But Gilles Villeneuve – he recalls with a smile – was very fond of porcini
mushrooms: he wanted a large quantity in the sauce, fresh, dry, frozen. Michael Schumacher,
on the other hand, was fond of soups and minestrone. But all the pilots came to eat at my
house, especially those of the English and German teams: their cooks made spaghetti glue ”.
“Pasticcino”, this is his nickname, has always been known by everyone as the “Chief of Formula
1 par excellence”. In fact, he was the first chef to cook on the paddocks, on the circuits and at
grand prizes around the world.
That was how Luigi Montanini was sent, at the end of the seventies, to accompany the Ferrari
team and inaugurated, creating step by step, what until then did not exist: the area of
hospitality in the paddocks.
The nickname “Pasticcino”
Already the nickname “Pasticcino” came from Piero Ferrari, as Luigi Montanini as a boy had
started his career as a chef working in the best confectioneries in Modena.
Now, just enter the restaurant “Da Pasticcino” in Castelnuovo, to discover the more than
twenty years of his career, in a gallery of photographs and articles that are also a true
testimony of how the world of racing has changed. On the walls hang images of a young
“Pastry shop” agitated and curled up between pots and camping stoves, up to the most recent
plans that portray him in front of large, well-equipped motorhomes.