’t mind me going out men..men are boring
TV celebrity chef Gina D’Acampo reveals his better half Jessica has a trusting outlook on his female friendships and tells Rick Fulton how he was inspired by his foodie grandfather
GINO D’Acampo is happy to get female attention as the housewives’ crumpet on This Morning. And off een he continues to enjoy being rounded by women. The Italian claims his wife Jessica ellina Morrison “doesn’t care” ven if he chooses to go out for inner with another woman. He has more than 700 working or him in his restaurants. And he always has a twinkle in his eye on TV when chatting to a woman whether it’s Holly Willoughby on This Morning or members of the public on Family Fortunes. Gino claimed: “She knows that I prefer women to men in life, generally. Even when I go out or n business, women are much more interesting than men. “Men are boring. Men, the only hing that they want to do is fight. can’t get my head around that. “What I love about women is ey don’t think about fighting, ey don’t think like that. Women very intelligent. And that’s what e about it. o when you have a conversation h a woman, you can talk and I to listen to women as it’s a que thing. When you hear women ng, it’s like, ‘Wow, I can do this It’s like watching a movie. lways says she doesn’t mind. I ery easily with other women. I o out for dinner with you and couldn’t care less. She knows I company of women and she eally care.” elebrity chef, 45, met Jessica at Sylvester Stallone’s Mambo taurant in Marbella where the then 18-year-old Gino was working as a cook.
They’ve been together ever since, marrying in 2002 six years after they began dating and have three children, Luciano, 19, Rocco, 16, and Mia, nine,
It hasn’t all been plain sailing though and they split up a year before getting hitched. But other than that hiccup they’ve been together for nearly 30 years.
Gino’s love of the opposite sex - and cooking – came from his grandfather, Giovanni, a chef with his own restaurant.
He said: “I used to go to his restaurant, he was always surrounded by women.
“He used to take the dishes to the table, he’d get kisses from all the women and I was thinking, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do with my life’. I wanted to be like him, always surrounded by women and always having good food around me.”
It wasn’t all dreaming of kitchens and full-bellied ladies – Gino wanted to be a dentist at first. Until he realised how much studying was involved.
He said: “To become a dentist, you have to study very hard, which I was rubbish at. So I thought, ‘OK, I like a white coat, I can’t be a dentist, so maybe I’ll be a chef and wear the chef ’s whites’.”
At 14 Gino got work experience in his grandad’s restaurant and never looked back.
And while it may sound like Gino is out every night having meals with women that aren’t his wife he is actually very family orientated.
He loved when the world stopped because of the pandemic. Gino has homes in Sardinia and in Hertfordshire, and when Covid hit, all the family flew to the Italian island. They enjoyed nearly two years of swimming and fishing and just enjoying each other’s company. He said: “We’re always together. “I’m the only person, probably in the world… and please don’t get me wrong, I’m devastated for all the people who died and whatever happened to the world... But if we put that to the side for a second, I can tell you that I loved every single minute of the pandemic.
“The moment that it happened, I picked myself and the family up and we came back to the island of Sardinia in our beautiful house in Olbia on the Costa Smeralda and we stayed there together for about a year and a half.
“It was great. If it wasn’t for people suffering,
I wouldn’t have wanted the pandemic to end.” This year though hasn’t started well with Gino’s My Pasta Bar chain going under with £5m in debts. The first of the three restaurants, all in London opened in 2013. He posted a video claiming he decided to close up because of Covid saying, “some you win, some you lose”. Despite that, he revealed he would be opening more restaurants this year. His son Luciano now runs a new restaurant named after him in London with a second Luciano, Alderley Edge in Cheshire opening last week. Gino said: “I don’t know if he’s going to be a chef in the making. But he is someone who understands food. He knows the ingredients that go together and those that don’t.” While Gino was working when he was second son Rocco’s age he isn’t pushing him and admitted he is only interested in “girls and football”. It seems that he’s a chip off the old block. “You remember when we were 16?” he laughed. “I can tell you what I was into at 16. Girls.” Daughter Mia, like most girls, loves copying dance moves on TikTok. Dad Gino isn’t all that happy. He said: “I cannot get my head around a nine-year-old trying to copy a 16-year-old, those kind of sexy moves. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, no, this is not what I want. This is not what I signed up for’, you know?”
Gino is upbeat. His main restaurant chain, Gino D’Acampo is spread across the UK which is doing well, he has a food import business and has developed a range of ready meals for Tesco.
He makes an estimated £2m a year from his TV work. As well as This Morning and Family Fortunes he has teamed up with Gordon Ramsay for three series of culinary bromance – Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip and hosted seven series of Gino’s Italian Escape, the most recent one shown in November he renamed Gino’s Italian Family Adventure for the pandemic-made series.
It saw him going around Sardinia with different members of his family. A cookbook to go with the series was based on his own family recipes.
He said: “We’ll cook family recipes and my wife will write it out and put it in a folder in the kitchen, and this folder has about three or four hundred recipes in it.
“Then I came up with the idea to film with the family off the back of that. I thought, ‘This is a good time for this, during Covid, when all the families stay together’”.
Gino is known for simple recipes. He never wants anyone to “overcomplicate your life” and claims even though he’s a chef he doesn’t want to spend ages in the kitchen.
And he is proud of his Italian cuisine heritage and claims he’s never met anyone who says they don’t like Italian food.
Gino has lived in the UK for a quarter of a century and is astonished at how food has changed in the country.
He laughed: “I remember 25 years ago, if I wanted a bottle of extra virgin olive oil I had to go to the chemist to get it.”
I remember 25 years ago if I wanted a bottle of extra virgin olive oil in Britain I had to go to the chemist to get it