Gennaro Contaldo

Gennaro Contaldo was born in Minori on the Amalfi coast, where he first started helping in local restaurant kitchens at the age of eight. He came to Britain in the late 1960s and spent his first years travelling around the country, working in local village restaurants and studying wild food. He then came to London where he worked as a chef in a number of restaurants before opening the award-winning 'Passione'.

We first met Gennaro Contaldo as the chef who inspired Jamie Oliver when they had worked together at Carluccio's. Since then Gennaro's quintessentially Italian spirit has made him a TV favourite and these days he divides his time between inspiring us to cook authentic Italian food through his books, magazine articles and television appearances, and working with Jamie on his 'Jamie's Italian' restaurants.

Gennaro lives in north-east London with his partner and their twin daughters.