Luca Marchetti

by Dr. Iain Corness

Luca Marchetti is the restaurateur and chef behind the very successful Trattoria Toscana located almost on the corner of Soi Zero (the old Soi Regent Marina) and Beach Road. It is a long way from the Leaning Tower of Pizza in Tuscany, but Pizza is never far from Luca’s thoughts. He was born less than 300 meters from the famous Leaning Tower, literally in its shadow. He is also like many Italians, deeply passionate about Italy.
We spoke together in the restaurant one afternoon, sipping our way through a bottle of Prosecco (Italian of course), under some photographs of Italian actress Sophia Loren, while Luca told me a little about his undoubtedly colorful life.
He came from good farming stock and indicated that the most important person in his life was his grandmother, who sounded as though she was one of those Italian widows who could keep a family together, just through the sheer force of her personality. He also waxed philosophical at this point. “The grandparents love you and do not expect anything back, not like the parents.”
He was a good student and went on to do accounting. “It made happy my father,” but when father tried to get him to join the local bank, Luca dug in his heels. “I refuse! I am going to the US,” was the young man’s rejoinder. Not only did he know where he wanted to go, he knew what he wanted to do – and that was to work in a restaurant, Italian of course.
The lure of working in the hospitality industry was strong. He had been working in restaurants from the age of 14 at nights and weekends. “I started washing toilets, and remembering to do behind the doors, and worked my way up to be a waiter in a pizzeria.” So when he arrived in San Francisco he immediately went to an Italian restaurant and applied for a job. It turned out that the owner came from Pizza, and the regional ties were enough to get him employment as a waiter for the next 12 months.
After the American dream, it was a return to Italy to do his compulsory 12 months military service. “I did one year and three days. The last three days were in jail!” Luca did not elaborate what had been the crime that necessitated three days detention, but it was obviously not too serious!
Now it was time for the young man to learn the craft he had decided was his future. He basically worked for no wages for a cousin of his father, who was married to an excellent chef. The young Luca applied himself well and very quickly learned his trade. “It makes no difference how much you study, the ingredients are the same for everybody, but you have to know the taste.” And this was when reference to his grandmother came in again. “She was the most important person in my life. She taught me the ‘taste’. You have to have the knowledge of the taste in your mouth,” said Luca, bringing taste testing while cooking to its simplest and most easily understood form.
After a few years he moved to Macau, where the father of the Italian girl he had married was living. “I was lucky. I went to Macau and opened a pizzeria. I was only 24 or 25.” The pizzeria was successful and he opened a pasta restaurant, but after five years there, Luca opened what he called “A real restaurant.”
Macau was good to him as far as being a restaurateur was concerned, but not so good for his personal life. “Macau is a good place to make money, but not a good place to live.” He became divorced and started coming across to Thailand for holidays. Thailand was good for him, however, as he met his Thai wife, and they are still happily married after 12 years. He enjoyed Thailand so much, he came over in 1997 when real estate values had slumped along with the currency, and bought a holiday home in Pattaya for them to use.
After another four years, he knew it was time to leave Macau and come to a part of the world he had come to love. He worked in Pattaya for a short while but then went to Bangkok to open his fourth restaurant, but Bangkok was not for him. “I don’t like much Bangkok. It is polluted and crowded.”
He then became philosophical again, comparing the life of a Bangkok restaurateur with that of being in Pattaya. “During the day, everybody is working – but me. At night everyone has fun – except me, because then I am working. Afterwards you go to a bar and you see the same old drunks. But in Pattaya it is much more relaxed. I can go out in my boat, fishing and photographing underwater.”
He left Bangkok and opened up Trattoria Toscana in Soi Zero 12 months ago, his fifth Italian restaurant. However, he does not go around the other Italian restaurants in Pattaya to check the competition, “because I don’t want them to influence me.” He believes that Italian cuisine has a taste that is suitable for everyone, and then compares the food to a beautiful woman. “If a woman is really beautiful, she is beautiful for everyone too.” Italians are indeed incurable romantics!
His relaxation is to be beside the water, either on his boat, scuba diving, fishing or photographing. Does he serve the fish he catches to his dinner guests? “No, the staff eat them! But fishing is an excuse to give me isolation and time to think.”
We finished the interview (and the Prosecco) with my asking whether this passionate Italian followed Ferrari in Formula 1. “No, they have a foreign pilot, and Valentino Rossi, he rides a Japanese motorcycle!” Luca Marchetti is a very Italian Italian. You can meet him any evening at Trattoria Toscana, and just ask him about the Leaning Tower of Pizza!