On fame, Becks and living life on the edge
rare (just). And hilarity ensues as he whips his phone out to take a picture of the over-sized salad bowl that arrives.
“Is there a rabbit coming out of that? I ordered that? That’s not a side salad, that’s a party salad!”
What’s no laughing matter, he reckons, is the foodie stereotype of a deep-fried nation.
“I saw a shop on the way here advertising deep fried boiled egg. Why is there a need to deep fry a boiled egg? It’s become a gimmick.
“You don’t shout enough about your own fabulous produce. Even your chefs tend to cook what people like instead of sticking to traditional Scottish food, which is amazing.”
He’ll be back north of the border with his Gino’s Italian Escape Live tour (Dundee Caird Hall May 6, Edinburgh EICC May 7), a spin-off of his hit ITV series.
Less than half of the show is planned, mostly the cooking elements. The rest is freestyle fun which depends on what the audience asks. That, it seems, can be anything.
“It’s all sorts of weird stuff,” he chortles. “From the size of my feet to whether I wear thongs or boxer shorts.
“The questions depend on how much they’ve been drinking. The first half everybody behaves. They’ve probably had one drink, maybe two.
“But then at the break they all go back to the bar and in the second half they get the courage to ask anything. And I mean anything.”
You get the feeling Gino’s irrepressibly flirty nature – a kiss on the waitress’s hand has her swearing a visit to his forthcoming Glasgow eatery – doesn’t act as any deterrent.
So, does wife Jessica, mum to their three kids, Luciano, 15, Rocco, 12, and Mia, four, ever get jealous?
“Sometimes I try to wind her up and say ‘look at all those women in the audience’,” he says with more than a twinkle in his eye.
“She just says that at the end of the day she’s the one who’ll be sleeping with me and the one having breakfast the next morning.”
And with that, Gino’s got the waitress happily flushed again as he launches into a passionate discussion about the merits of Eton mess compared to tiramisu.