A sea of supporters at the Rino Gattuso fish shop

Saying that the crowd was immense is no exaggeration; on the opening day, hundreds of people surrounded the Gattuso & Bianchi fish & gastronomy shop, including numerous VIPs. The owner, Rino Gattuso (with his partner from Gallarate, Andrea Bianchi) welcomed his team mates Ronaldinho, David Beckham Luca Antonini, Davide De Gennaro, Christian Abbiati and Massimo Ambrosini, but also the Juventus player Vincenzo Iaquinta, also originally from Calabria. At first, Gattuso was “taken hostage” by the telecameras and journalists, then by the crowd which grew minute by minute; a brief appearance with Beckham, behind the fish counter, drove supporters and onlookers crazy. In the “private” area, in the shop’s stores, Rino received other friends and, last but not least, Ronaldinho. “The idea came to me one night at the restaurant with Andrea Bianchi,” said Rino, an “aficionado” of the pastry shop “Bianchi alle Torri”, one of the two opened by the heirs of the historic shop in Corso Italia. With this new entrepreneurial gamble, Gattuso strengthens his bond with Gallarate, consisting of human relationships but also of real estate investments. The new fish shop is almost a bridge between his life of today, as a star of AC Milan, in the North, and that of the past, in the village of Schiavonea of Corigliano Calabro, where many people (including his parents) live thanks to the sea and to the farming of molluscs.

The Gattuso & Bianchi fish shop (in the photo, the two partners) aims to combine direct fish selling with gastronomy; in one part of the shop is the fish counter, in the other, there is space and contact with the kitchen. The kitchen itself has become the last refuge for “Ringhio” and his team mates, who are literally surrounded by the crowd, also in the areas that in theory should have been private but that have been filled with “top” supporters (in the streets, two police patrols intervened to regulate the traffic). If the crowd of supporters become customers, the shop will be a sure success.