About us - Pinco Pallino

O nas

POZNAJ NAS BLIŻEJ

The recipe for success

TOMATO SAUCE AND INTUITION

I entered the kitchen holding my contract and was thinking about jumping into the deep end. Even though I was in my own country, I felt lost. Even though I was surrounded by other people, I felt lonely. I kept asking myself whether what I was going to do was my life path. And I heard the soft voice of my intuition within me, but now terror prevailed. I had been felling it for months, it keep me awake at nights and pinned me down. I recalled the beginning of this journey….
Studying in Italy was not only about the desire to learn but also about taking a deep breath, feeling the freedom and travelling that I always dreamed about. I fell in love with Italy, with an Italian man, and even somehow with my Italian mother-in-law.

A house full of people for whom my mother-in-law cooked lunch and dinner. It surprised me with warmth and finding meaning in shared meals. When I entered her kitchen – full of smells and flavors and looked at her – I asked myself where does that woman take the strength from? She cooked for 12 people everyday!!! And I did with her. I watched, helped and accidentally absorbed the atmosphere and this kind of naturalness in casual preparation of dinners for so many people. Then I was able to get it out of me. My mother-in-law. One of the aces up a chef’s sleeve.

Another ace was Francesco – a restaurant director at Relais Todini – a historic villa and a five-star hotel where I had the pleasure to work as a waitress and then a receptionist. For 15 years – long, but you do not abandon this place. You didn’t want to leave the place. This place had its own history and soul. Francesco taught me the art of running a restaurant. The art of finding a personality within customers, the right approach towards them, tact, but most importantly, he taught me to be good at whatever you do, you need to know the ins and outs of your work and start from the lowest level. I added my innate cheerfulness, sense of humor and the fact that I like people. I was getting better at what I did.

When I was a waitress, I also watched how the chefs worked. I was stealing everything with my eyes and put it on a shelf in my heart. Every time I entered the kitchen and looked at their work, I felt fascination, curiosity and strange longing. And I couldn’t wait to get home and recreate what I saw on that day. I loved cooking and experimenting. The kitchen has become a remedy for everything – a hard day, a broken heart and any other failure. Any reason was good enough to grab the pan! And this lasted 15 years…

One day, I realized that I was at an important stage in my life… My daughter was in college and I had a teenage son. Me, forty years old with my irresistible desire to live, to do something new… to experience something unknown. I felt a force that was pushing me somewhere. I was satisfied with life but I wanted something different. Happy but wanting to live. And then I had this crazy idea: why not move the sunny Italy to Poland? A restaurant.

My intention was to do a start-up, hire chefs, and then come to Poland every now and then to look after the business… an investment. I have never even thought about cooking there! I didn’t consider myself a cook.
I picked Poznań. I didn’t know anyone here except for my business partner.
The restaurant has started and problems have begun. We were short of staff lacking right chefs and it happened: I had to enter the kitchen because someone had to cook! Although I did what I always loved, I felt totally terrified as I had no gastronomy education or experience in running a kitchen! It was due to the sense of duty and the money invested that made me stay there. I got down to work!

I decided to learn every activity in the kitchen. Pizza was definitely the hardest. It is over a meter long – putting it into the oven and taking it out so that it looked the same was extremely difficult for me. I spent 12 hours on 12 consecutive days dealing with it. I wasted dozens of kilograms of dough, but I kept putting it in stubbornly until I stopped trembling every time I threw it into the oven…
The same story applied to everything else. I learned in order to be able to teach others one day and return home calm. I did everything with this intention. I was responsible for the entire kitchen. I could feel its weight. I was physically and mentally exhausted. It kept me awake at nights and I was yearned for home and kids.

The restaurant was going great, but unfortunately my cooperation with my business partner was not going that well. A year passed and what was left was closed doors and unpaid invoices. And me. Devastated, lonely, scared and being aware that all my hard work was in vain. It was a hard time for me. Lack of sleep. The feeling of absurdity. The only Light was wonderful emails and messages from customers who often visited the restaurant and loved my kitchen. All I wanted to do was pay my debts and leave, forgetting what happened to me here. Weeks were passing. One day I woke up thinking: I will leave and lose… I will stay and try to win. I stayed.

Suddenly, all the people I learned so much from in Italy stood behind me. You can do it, they seemed to say. I thought that life has been showing me this future and the fact that the kitchen was my life and I tried to escape from it. Now I decided to start again. Alone. Different. This was in the past… Today I am standing in my own kitchen at Pinco Pallino and my heart is bursting with joy. This is my place. I know it today. I have changed and grown stronger. I realized that fighting yourself is pointless. Our personality and charisma come out of us the moment we learn to listen to our own intuition. Trust yourself.

Two years have passed. On November 5th, 2019, I moved the restaurant to a bigger place, I run cooking workshops all over Poland, I win awards and prizes. The embassy awarded me with a certificate which many Italian restaurants dream about, after only a year of running the restaurant. I am the only direct importer of black truffles from Umbria. I can be myself and find fulfillment in what I do. I know that the hard time I had to undergo has taught me not to give up. Never. I cook and look to the future with hope.

Margherita Kardaś

Pinco Pallino ristorante italiano
Wroniecka 24 street
tel. 732 435 592
www.pinco-pallino.pl https://www.facebook.com/pincopallinopoznan/

__ O nas __

POZNAJ NAS BLIŻEJ

__ The recipe for success __

TOMATO SAUCE AND INTUITION

Margherita Kardaś

O nas

The recipe for success