In 1969 Ado Campeol dipped his finger into a bowl and as he tasted the sweet whipped mixture inside his face lit up as only an Italian’s can.
Campeol, who owned Le Beccherie restaurant in the northeastern Italian city of Treviso, had been alerted to this strange concoction by his head chef. Roberto Linguanotto had been mixing egg yolks and sugar to make vanilla ice cream when a dollop of soft mascarpone cheese fell into the bowl. On a whim, he carried on whipping.
Ado’s wife, Alba, who ran the kitchen, then had the idea of adapting a traditional local dessert called sbatudin (which means whipped), a mixture of egg yolk, sugar, coffee and ladyfinger biscuits, which was traditionally fed to children, young mothers and the elderly to give them an energy boost.
The three of them painstakingly developed the mascarpone-laced version of the dessert over many iterations, whipping up a creamy mixture that would set into a pleasing foam and layering it with ladyfinger biscuits soaked in coffee. The square or triangular-cut dessert would be topped with a liberal dusting of cocoa powder, adding a pleasing dark brown colour to set off the white foam and light brown biscuits below.
The sweet course was finally added to the menu at the traditional restaurant in 1972. Alba named it tiramisu (“pick me up”) in reference to the fact that years before she had nibbled on sbatudin to sustain her through breastfeeding her son, Carlo.
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Over the next decade Campeol evangelised about the dessert in his role as front of house, greeting customers with a beaming smile and the firmest of handshakes and advising them with the greatest delicacy on what to select from the menu. If their stamina was slightly sagging having enjoyed liberal helpings from their starters and main courses, tiramisu came to the rescue.
Ado Campeol was born in Treviso in the Veneto region in 1927 to Carlo and Antonietta Campeol. His father opened Le Beccherie 1939 and he helped out in the restaurant from an early age. His father died in 1946, but not before teaching the teenage Ado everything he knew about running a traditional Italian ristorante. Assisted by his mother, who ran the kitchen, and his sisters Elide and Carla, he worked day and night and made a success of taking on the ownership of Le Beccherie.
In 1954 Campeol married Alba di Pillo, who knew nothing about restaurants. Before their wedding she was sent to Venice to serve an apprenticeship at a catering firm. Carlo, who survives him, was born in 1955. In 1958 Alba replaced Campeol’s mother as the mistress of the kitchen.
Campeol enjoyed playing rugby and was a member of a choir, but he was rarely away from the restaurant. An obliging Italian gentleman of the old school, he became a fixture as the meeter and greeter in the same blue blazer that became progressively tighter around the waist. One of his favourite jobs was to wheel a trolley of boiled meats from table to table, giving diners sage advice on the flavours of each meat and how to garnish them, before slicing the cuts with pleasing dexterity.
“He was precise, always present and led by example, inspiring a generation of staff at the restaurant who went on to open their own restaurants,” said Carlo, who took on the running of the restaurant in the 1990s. “He was reserved, courteous and generous.” In 2013 the Campeol family relinquished management of Le Beccherie after 74 years, but continue to own it.
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The restaurant’s signature dessert might have remained a well-kept secret among the cognoscenti of Treviso but for Giuseppe Maffioli. The food writer began to extol the virtues of tiramisu in the magazine Veneto in 1981, and recommended trying it with a large glass of vino santo, a dessert wine. Many did.
More restaurants in the region and further afield began to serve the dessert but tiramisu’s journey to becoming a standard item on the dessert menu of restaurants across the western world was accelerated by a scene in the hit 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle. In the film a widower (Tom Hanks) is discussing his reluctant return to the dating scene years after he had first dated his late wife and asks his friend (Rob Reiner) for some tips on what modern women want. Reiner introduces the concept of tiramisu as a mysterious thing that never fails to woo a lady — without ever explaining what it is. In the days after the film’s release the switchboard of Tristar Pictures, the film’s distributor, was jammed with requests from eager men across America demanding to know the meaning of tiramisu. Was it a dance? A sex position? Once the secret was out, demand for the dessert soared.
So did theories about its origins. Some claimed that the recipe had first been invented by the madam of a Treviso brothel around 1800. After their first encounter, customers would be offered the dessert as a means of “reinvigorating” them in preparation for another.
Denizens of Siena claim that it was created at the end of the 17th century in honour of Cosimo III, grand duke of Tuscany. Several other prominent chefs across Italy have claimed to have invented tiramisu.
Campeol, who did not patent the original recipe, never rose to such provocation. Others in Treviso did so on his behalf, keen to protect the honour of the region’s growing reputation for food and drink (Veneto is also one of the homes of prosecco). Luca Zaia, governor of Veneto, said in 2016: “No one will steal the tiramisu from us. The truth is carved in stone.” In 2010 the original recipe had been certified by the Italian Academy of Cuisine in response to the proliferation of alternatives, in which the biscuits would also be soaked in rum or marsala (an evolution that many food experts approved of for adding a subtle counterbalance to the coffee). In 2013 an attempt to obtain EU certification for Le Beccherie’s original recipe failed.
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By then tiramisu was firmly part of the city’s tourist industry. An annual Tiramisu World Cup is held, featuring variations produced with onions, chillies, wasabi and tea.
Though not an extravagant gourmand, Campeol enjoyed the occasional plate of authentic tiramisu and lived to a ripe old age. His wife found that tiramisu had picked her up many times, and she is still going strong at the age of 92.
Ado Campeol, restaurateur, was born on December 15, 1927. He died on October 30, 2021, aged 93