Passing through the most famous cooking show in Brazil, MasterChef, might lead us to believe otherwise, but he is still an amateur cook – because he loves what he does, as he himself says.

He is the official chef of Connectarch events in the 2023 season. He will once once more lead the invited architects of Conexões Casa to an immersion in the kitchen, this week, at Casa Brasil. Because designing the spaces is not enough, the professional has to experience a kitchen, for real!

So, get to know better the chef who left the TV screen to spice up the Connectarch experiences!

It all started with a broken pot

Around the age of 39, following a lot of cooking for friends to relieve stress, they started insisting that he sign up for the program. “One day a friend brought a participant from a previous edition to my house, and he wanted to cook. I asked to be careful with my clay pot, but the guy broke the pot and moqueca went all over the place!”. The tragic incident with the favorite pan was what motivated Fabrizio, who thought: “I didn’t even want to, but now I’ll find a way to get on the show”.

Confident that MasterChef was for amateurs – people who love what they are doing, and not just for the profession – he recorded a video, encouraged by another friend, he was selected and entered the program. “It was intense, exhausting, exhausting. There were 20 weeks with the program on the air. I had a company at the time, it was a bad time for business. But I still came out in 8th place, selected from more than 70,000 applicants”.

Fabrizio left the program well aware that momentary visibility was no guarantee of success. He didn’t see himself in the kitchen, opening a restaurant. It was the way he already knew: he opened a new company operating in the technology sector. This is the current job. Chef? Stay for free time!

Cooking is an act of love… for the kitchen!

“Bench, wall, floor. All this embraces you in a kitchen. We need to be welcomed by what surrounds us. All of this has an obviously sentimental appeal, but speaks volumes regarding the professional side. How can a product be useful in the daily lives of those who use the kitchen? How will you make cleaning easier? How to receive well, with affection and care? Having a good countertop makes the difference for cleaning, hygiene. How to enjoy cooking?”. Some of the chef’s reflections are ours – from Connectarch – too, so one of the many Connectarch experiences is taking program members right into the kitchen.

The debut in haute cuisine

And architect can cook? The chef makes sure so! And more: it has everything to do! “Cooking is an act of love, of dedication. It’s a bit of what the architect does. A good part of those who are there have a vision focused on the design of houses or enterprises, but they build for those who will need to cook, and it is always important that they have a minimum of notion, such as the bottom of the drawer, the space for the closet, the circulation of people. Engaging is different from making others look. When you execute something you are learning, you learn”.

And they really get their hands dirty. In the pasta, in the salad, in the meat, in the sauce… Everything is not always beautiful, sometimes amateurism takes over, but the chef guarantees that no pan is injured in this process! Neither pan nor countertop, since the knife cannot damage a good porcelain surface, right?

Cooking with Chef Fabrizio goes way beyond the basics. The experience is at MasterChef level. And how do architects fare in this process? “Some are apprehensive because they’ve never cooked, it’s not part of their daily lives, others don’t even go near a kitchen. But they disarm, take off their armor and get their hands dirty too. When we see it, all this unfolds in 30, 40 dishes. It’s like the day-to-day work we already do, we need to be participatory to work”.

Those amateurs!

Octopus, paella, duck ragu with fresh pasta, Sicilian lemon risotto with prawns… It’s all the better! And who has never fried an egg, how do you do it? The boss says that everyone overcomes themselves, but until they get there, there are many challenges – and disgusting ones. “In one of the experiences, some guests had never tried making dough, each one did as they had learned, but the result was a pink dough, a green one, a purple one and a white one. It was very funny! There are also those who have never seen the preparation of an octopus, or the cleaning of shrimp and don’t like the texture… really, it’s a bit soft!”

For Fabrizio, the kitchen is a school, regardless of who enters it. Creativity, improvisation, agility… these are very welcome skills for everyday life, for any profession, since everything in life is experience. “It’s like having a baby. As much as you read a lot, you only have to understand”. The chef also understands this subject well. With only two years old, Martina, Fabrizio’s daughter, certainly has a lot to teach us in the kitchen. “Daddy, I’m going to help you”, she says, interacting with her father’s recipes.

Follow Connectarch guests in the Casa Brasil kitchen on the @decortiles profile.