Chef Rubio: this is why Gabriele Rubini is not just a television personality

From the national rugby team to the trattorias most loved by Italian truck drivers, to get to Gaza. With him also the porters of Genoa ready for a protest after the beating they suffered

RIMINI – The photo of his face reduced to a steak is making the rounds on the web and social media, but not everyone knows Chef Rubio’s CV, also due to the break he took from the screens a few years ago. His real name is Gabriele Rubini, born in Frascati on 20 June 1982. There are those who remember him sitting in the trattorias best known by Italian truck drivers, feasting beyond belief on everything that was brought to his table. In fact, he has hosted several cooking programs, including “Unti e bisunti” and “Truck drivers in the restaurant“. Rubini is a chef and television personality. But his 190 centimeters of height also recall his past as a professional rugby player, with numerous matches played for the national team, a past which he had to give up in 2011 due to a cruciate rupture. strong>
Today in his official biography he defines himself as “a non-conventional, independent chef, who by choice does not have his own restaurant but is an insatiable traveler, as well as a convinced activist for human rights and supporter of the Palestinian cause“. And it would be precisely this last commitment that led to the attack of which he was the victim last night.

He earned the pseudonym “chef” thanks to the diploma obtained from the Alma – International School of Italian Cuisine and the work experience in various restaurants, also gained in New Zealand, but Chef Rubio, by choice, has never had his own restaurants. And again: “Always committed on multiple fronts to promoting ‘good food’ as a paradigm of sharing, well-being, integration, cultural nourishment and social recovery, especially for the most difficult situations (prisons, disabilities, food cure, eating disorders, food waste …) – he reports in his “Bio” – Since 2014 Rubio has been studying the Italian Sign Language (LIS) at the ISSR (State Institute of the Deaf in Rome )”. And still on his CV: he was the official chef of Casa Italia at the Paralympics in Rio and ‘ambassador’ of the campaign for human rights Write for Rights byAmnesty International. His television adventure ends in 2019, at the end of filming ‘In search of lost taste whenChef Rubiodecides to take a break from the big screen “to dedicate himself totally to rights activism human rights and support of the Palestinian cause – his official biography reports – From that moment he undertook trips to the Gaza Strip and initiatives in support of the occupied territories”.

THE PORTERS OF GENOA IN PRESIDITION FOR CHEF RUBIO
After the violent attack he suffered, numerous voices were raised in his solidarity: from the pro-Gaza movements to the Italian Communist Party and Communist refoundation. Among his supporters, also the Calp, the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers of Genoa, which organized a protest in the afternoon from 4.30 pm at the CAP in via Albertazzi. “Last night our brother Chef Rubio was attacked and beaten to death by a Zionist gang who ambushed him under his house – writes Calp in a note – He has always been on the side of the resistance of the Palestinian people without any doubts and without buts and has always paid the price.”  

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