Video | Cheese carver extraordinaire on his unusual art, the best cheeses to sculpt and the chance that made him a chef
Alberto Tomasi has made a living out of cutting cheese. For more than 50 years the Italian has been creating art from hunks of provolone, Asiago and other dense cheeses, as well as fruit, vegetables and ice. See his work in Hong Kong
It’s not even 9.30am and 78-year-old Alberto Tomasi is anxious to get cracking. He arrived in Hong Kong the previous day after being invited by upmarket food retailer City'super to demonstrate his cheese sculpting skills at its Artisan Cheese & Charcuterie Fair in Causeway Bay that runs until March 4.
“He just needs a block of cheese, a table and chair and he can work all day,” says his 23 year-old grandson Marco Tomasi, who accompanied his grandfather and translated on the trip.
It turns out that Alberto, his son Gianluca, and grandson Marco are all chefs; Gianluca specialises in canapés, while Marco likes to cook all kinds of dishes he says. But for Alberto, or Berto as he likes to be called, it’s carving – squash and pumpkins, to watermelon, ice and wood – and of course cheese.
Berto Tomasi hadn’t intended to become a chef. As his father worked with wood, Tomasi thought he’d build houses, but after finding out he had an allergic reaction to cement powder, he switched to working in a restaurant at the age of 19.
It turned out to be the best decision he ever made.
In his early 20s Tomasi began focusing on food carving. After peeling tomato skins to turn into roses and sculpting turnips into roses to put in a roasted pigs’ mouths, he took one more step to stand out of the crowd and became the first Italian to carve cheese.
