Goodbye to Stefano Mantero, the florist pastry chef. “He will be baking cakes for all of Heaven”

Genoa – «I have never found anyone who, at the age of 90, despite pain, fatigue and everything else, with sun, snow, storms, every holy night at 2.30 was in his chair, in the command post». In the words of her nephew Filippo, who like mother Stefania has inherited the family legacy and tradition, she encloses a life of work, sacrifices, but also of great satisfactions and goals: those of Stefano Mantero, master pastry chef, passed away yesterday morning. Dean of the Genoese pastry shop, Mantero worked until the day he was admitted to hospital, last December 22nd.

The laboratory in the back of the shop on via Cantore, in Sampierdarena, was his home. «A tireless worker. He was always the first to raise the shutter. Now he flew away in his pastry chef uniform: it would have been strange to see him in an elegant suit. He would have turned up his nose too.”

His daughter Stefania Mantero is moved. She was by her father's side until his last breath. «He was great until the end. He fought like a warrior after his first heart attack. He wanted me by his side. She asked me to give him my hand to accompany him and then he said goodbye to me.”

They called him “the florist of Sampierdarena” for his royal icing flowers, the specialty that had made him famous. The eldest of nine brothers, Stefano Mantero had started following the example of his baker father, he was initially hired as a boy together with Paride Batini, who would later become the historic consul of the Genoese “camalli”, at the Gelati confectionery factory, in the historic centre: together they delivered sweets on bicycles throughout the city.

The first business was a bakery in via Canepari, in Certosa, then another bakery in via Gian Battista Monti, also in Sampierdarena, with his beloved wife Anna, who passed away in 2018. Finally, the opening, in 1972, of the historic Pasticceria Mantero in via Cantore, fresh from fifty years of activity celebrated with a big party at the Modena Theatre.

It has been added to the historic headquarters, renovated in 2022, since 2015 the coffee shop business in the adjacent room, always under the guidance of his daughter Stefania, who has also been joined by his son Filippo since the Covid period. Who retains magical memories of his grandfather.

«He had an incredible sense of duty. Once he infuriated his grandmother by giving up an anniversary trip to Cape Verde because “otherwise how will they manage in the pastry shop without me for a week?””, recalls his grandson, who from the pandemic onwards had become grandfather Stefano's right-hand man , thus making grandmother Anna's wish come true. «It was incredible: once, with a supplier, it was enough for him to smell the hazelnuts to understand that they were from the previous year's harvest – he recalls with emotion – He obviously made him bring them back: he was a perfectionist, obsessive in his work, precise, he had to have the best products. He is and will forever be unattainable. I will be able to put all the effort in the world into it even if being like him is impossible. But I hope I can live up to his teachings. And make him proud. Now, with their grandmother, they will be creating the most beautiful pastry shop in all of Paradise.”