Massimo Bottura's enthusiasm is infectious. The Italian chef has a way of speaking that brings you in on his schemes and sends you chasing multiple trains of thought.
"You know what we're going to do? We're going to serve an eel in Tokyo — the best eel you can get in the Po River!" he tells me, punctuating the sentence with a chuckle of delight.
Conversations with Bottura — whose Modena restaurant, Osteria Francescana, has earned three Michelin stars and ranks third on San Pellegrino's list of best restaurants in the world — frequently begin somewhere in the middle. He's referring to a dish called An Eel Swimming up the Po River, which he plans to introduce at an upcoming dinner event at Bulgari Il Ristorante in Tokyo. But this fact is not immediately evident as he jumps from topic to topic: bags of "gold garbage" filled with leftover bread (on the issue of food waste); the Capri Battery (a sculpture by artist Joseph Beuys, which uses the acid from a lemon to power a lamp); and the wisdom of books.