Author and cooking instructor Giuliano Bugialli has died at age 88

We have just learned that one of the most popular Italian cooking teachers in the United States has died. Giuliano Bugialli passed away in Viareggio, Italy, on April 26, 2019, at the age of 88. Florentine by birth, Giuliano spent most of his life in New York. In the 1970s, Giuliano brought authentic Italian cuisine to the United States, where he made his regional Italian cooking one of the greatest passions of American chefs and home cooks.

Giuliano created his own Italian cooking school in NYC that soon became known as one of the most revered and celebrated cooking schools in the United States. During Giuliano’s four decades of teaching cooking, many great American chefs and cooks studied with Giuliano. His cooking school was also successful with many Hollywood celebrities and numerous chefs and cooks from all over the world.

Giuliano’s cooking vision became his “American dream.” He arrived in the United States as an Italian language teacher to a college in New York. At the end of the year’s teaching session, a cooking competition was announced among the teachers. Every teacher had to prepare a dish to submit to a jury formed by the parents of the students. Giuliano put into practice his boyhood kitchen skills, honed by cooking lunches and dinners for his family. The success of Giuliano’s preparation of cannelloni impressed a farsighted businessman, who immediately offered to help Giuliano open a cooking school.

Giuliano published numerous cookbooks that are among the most definitive and best-selling books on Italian cuisine, including The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. Bugialli on Pasta, and Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Italy. Giuliano’s many cookbooks cover traditional dishes from various regions of Italy, and includes authetic dishes from Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, and Emilia.

To honor his illustrious career, the City of Florence, Italy, awarded Giuliano with the highly prestigious Fiorino d’Oro Award. Numerous American Cooking Awards also filled the shelves of his New York cooking school and home. A few years ago, having left the cooking school industry, Giuliano moved to Philadelphia, where he lived until two years ago. Health issues and Giuliano’s love of family brought him back to Italy, where he died on Friday. Giuliano will be buried next to his mother and sister in Florence, Italy. After four decades of enjoying his life and cooking classes in the US, Giuliano is back home to his beloved Florence.