The master of Italian food
Paolo Tullio was many things, not least a great friend and colleague of mine. His death, at the age of 65, was felt deeply by the vast number of people whose lives he had touched. He was a selftaught chef who was awarded a Michelin star in 1978, just a year after he had opened Armstrong’s Barn deep in Wicklow. He was an actor, voice-over artist and, at one stage, a cattle dealer.
He was also a polymath. We spent a lot of time together when we were on The Restaurant. Occasionally I’d wonder aloud about something technical and Paolo would inevitably be able to explain it. He loved technology and had the first email address in Ireland. He told me what an app was long before most of us had ever heard of such things.
He also loved cars, especially the beautiful Aston-Martin that he had inherited from his father and which burst into flames in the village of Annamoe; it was destroyed and replaced by a vintage MG.
Paolo’s early years were spent in England and he remained at school there, at Downside, when his parents moved to Dublin to open The Green Rooster on O’Connell Street.
AFTER school, he followed them and attended Trinity, where he formed lifelong friendships with many contemporaries — he had a gift for friendship — such as Paul McGuinness and Chris de Burgh, who would become his brother-in-law.
Paolo wrote a series of essays about food and cooking in The Sunday Tribune, where I first met him, and four books, North of Naples, South of Rome (about the valley from which the Tullios come and where he is buried), The Mushroom Man, and Longing and Belonging.
The fourth is Paolo Tullio Cooks Italian, published in 2010. We had lunch together to celebrate the book deal which involved a very substantial advance (and Paolo undertaking all the pictures, fine photography being yet another string to his bow).
It’s an unconventional book in that there are fairly few recipes laid out as such, but he gives detailed, mouth-watering accounts of how to cook all sorts of Italian staples.
This and Marcella Hazan are where I look for guidance when cooking anything Italian.
His love of good food and hospitality was bound up in his sense of nationality. He would often say that when two Italians meet in the street in the morning, they would always ask each other what they had planned for lunch. His other loves were coffee, cigarettes and women, whom he adored.
When The Restaurant started, my job was to be bad cop to
Paolo’s good cop. It suited his demeanour because he was always driven by kindness and a fascination with people. I remember thinking, the last time I saw him (I brought him some extra virgin olive oil to cheer up the dreary hospital food), that he had something very special in common with my mother. She used food as an expression of love and I’m pretty sure it was the same for Paolo. I should have told him, but I thought we would meet again.
So, as Paolo, the classical scholar, would say in Latin, ‘carpe diem’. Seize the day.