A well-known Sicilian restaurateur, arrested at his home for stealing narcotics for the purpose of smuggling, defended himself by saying he was looking for "new flavors," the Italian media reported on Saturday.
At the home of Chief Carmelo Chiaramonte, in Trecastagni, a small village at the foot of Etna, the carabineers found two marijuana plants two meters high, 500 grams of Indian hemp inflorescences, as well as wine, jars of olive, coffee and tuna, all flavored with cannabis.
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Among the canned goods, there were also boxes of olives bearing the label "St. Catherine SballOlives" and a bottle of wine labeled "Kannamang".
The man claims to be "agro-food consultant for the kitchen of the third millennium"
To justify himself, the 50-year-old cook, left at liberty while waiting for his judgment, explained to the police that he was "agribusiness consultant for the third millennium cuisine". And to his gastronomic argument, the one who is described as a lover of his terroir, added that he was "in search of new flavors".
A renowned chef
Famous on his native island, the iconoclast chef Chiaramonte was particularly known behind the furnaces of the Katane Palace Hotel restaurant in Catania, then as a host of a culinary program on an Italian public channel. He had also brought theatrical and gastronomic shows all over Italy, whose aim "was to make known the history of products and the tradition of Sicilian agriculture", explains the regional daily La Sicilia on Saturday.
In one of them, titled Immoral Recipes and Aphrodisiac Foods , he gave, says the newspaper, a premonitory definition of his job: "A cook is a drug addict and an alchemist".