Chef Massimo Piedimonte of Montreal’s Le Mousso embodies the notion that being competitive and humble need not be mutually exclusive. “I am a competitive person, but I don’t really take food that seriously,” Piedimonte notes. “I have so much fun, and I keep on having fun with it.”
Chef Massimo Piedimonte of Montreal’s Le Mousso embodies the notion that being competitive and humble need not be mutually exclusive. “I am a competitive person, but I don’t really take food that seriously,” Piedimonte notes. “I have so much fun, and I keep on having fun with it.”
Piedimonte discovered the fun of working in kitchens at the age of 16, when he got his start in the industry working in a pizzeria, and he jokes that he’s still doing that cool summer job 13 years later.
That foundation led him through some of Montreal’s top kitchens. He worked at Europea and Maison Boulud, and eventually landed an internship at one of the world’s best restaurants, Noma in Denmark. “I had a near-death experience, and it led me to reflect on my life,” Piedimonte says. “I didn’t have any regrets, but I wanted to stage at Noma.”
There, Piedimonte realized that many of the ingredients and techniques he was being exposed to would transpose well to what was available back home in Quebec. This revelation led him to open Le Mousso with chef and friend Antonin Mousseau-Rivard, to much acclaim.
Then he saw a flyer for the Hawksworth Young Chef Scholarship, and as he was tucking his son into bed one night, he decided that he wanted to compete to win the money for his family. He enjoyed the experience so much that he actually enrolled in the competition again.
But competition is out of the picture for now. “I don’t think I could do my job correctly, be a good husband, a good father and a good competitor,” he explains. As he waits for the arrival of his second child, he says that his priorities are with his family.
“I’m focused on that, and making sure the restaurant is going to run just as well when I’m not around for [the baby’s first] five to seven weeks,” Piedimonte jokes.
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