“I consider myself a bit of a visionary,” says Gabriele Corcos, the co-owner of The Tuscan Gun, a casual storefront Italian café in Brooklyn’s residential Windsor Terrace neighborhood. “To the degree that I often end up shooting myself in the foot,” he adds laughing, “I’m always too early.”
Inside The Tuscan Gun, periodic chopping and grinding come from the cooks in the open kitchen; old soul classics play on the sound system. Corcos, wearing jeans and t-shirt, gives an example of being “too early.” He began posting a series of Italian “how to” cooking videos on YouTube in the mid-2000s when it was a new platform.
The series titled Under The Tuscan Gun starred Corcos and his wife, actress Debi Mazar who can be seen in HBO’s Entourage and the Scorsese classic Goodfellas, among other productions. These unadorned videos were shot in Corcos and Mazar’s Los Angeles kitchen; their charming repartee continues throughout the series—with occasional hints of bawdy humor—as they prepare Bolognese sauce, pasta e fagioli, minestrone, even limoncello and other Italian delights.
“People were calling the house, begging my wife to ask me to go get a real job, that I wasn’t going anywhere,” recalls Corcos of his foray into early YouTube video posting, “that nobody would notice the project, there was no money there to be made.”
However, Corcos’s vision and efforts paid off. The series developed a following and eventually landed the couple a show on the Cooking Channel called Extra Virgin, which ran from 2010 to 2015. “We became somewhat of a global couple,” says Corcos, noting the Cooking Channel’s wide distribution in 85 countries. Their cookbook of the same name published in 2014 sold 90,000 copies according to Corcos.
Corcos wonders if he’s “too early” once again, this time utilizing the virtual reality experience. “I pride myself on always being tech-savvy,” says Corcos as natural light floods the cafe, back lighting a prized Ducati motorcycle on display in the window. But Corcos admits his embrace of VR is recent, “this was one of the things that I still hadn’t approached.”
His interest in VR was piqued when Gordon Meyer, a neighborhood Tuscan Gun customer who works at the VR company YouVisit, showed Corcos several demos. Corcos was dazzled by the immersive, interactive experience; one is easily transported from atop Machu Picchu in Peru to poking around the minimalist Atelier Swarovski Home in its creamy palette featuring crystal pieces.
They partnered to create a short VR experience called Super Tuscan: A Cooking Lesson with Chef Gabriele Corcos. It’s currently viewable in 360 on all desktops; the downloadable VR apps are slated for an October release.
Inside Corcos’s VR experience the viewer can watch his entertaining cooking lessons that take place inside the Tuscan Gun’s open kitchen. Corcos speaks off the cuff as he muddles mint leaves for his special grappa cocktail “The Conga,” prepares saffron broth for pasta al vino and tops a farro salad with “flavor bombs,” small roasted tomatoes. It’s easy to zoom in, inches from a sizzling pan of pork, or zoom out and mosey around café. Unlike a cooking lesson on TV, there is no fixed view chosen by the production team.
Source: Forbes