For those who frequented the historical Italian Malindi, the one at the end of the Millennium when, as Lucio Dalla and Francesco De Gregori sang, on the shores of the Indian Ocean it was full of "hearts that fell ill in the land of freedom", the Italian cook par excellence was just him: the Tuscan Roberto Menichetti, known as "Il Pipa".
Like many of his companions in adventure and freedom, he too left us at the age of eighty. A fact as sad as it is anagraphic, but also terribly accelerated by one of the darkest periods of the post-war period.
The Pipa had landed in the magic of Malindi, from his native Montecatini, in 1974 with another true Tuscan, Camillo Duranti who, after taking over the cottages of the "Suli Suli", was planning to open a large restaurant on the seafront, on the model of the historic Capannina in Forte dei Marmi, with a restaurant, piano bar and perhaps even a disco.
The chef of that equatorial dream should have been him, and he became one 16 years later.
Those were fabulous years, immortalised by director Marco Risi in his film "Il continente nero" (The Dark Continent) with Diego Abatantuono, and Camillo in the part of himself.
But Pipa was more himself than Abatantuono and Duranti put together: always ready with a joke, a gruff manner and a heart as good as the dishes he invented. His orange prawns with ginger, for example. Travelling back and forth from Italy, often with his inseparable and beloved wife Giuliana, Pipa also worked at the Casino and Kiwi together with his great friend Eugenio.
For a few years, also due to his precarious health, he was no longer seen in Kenya, but he was always thinking of the ideal place to relax and cultivate some real friendships.
With the dream of running a restaurant by the sea where "only those I like can come in, and the others can go to hell".
Great Pipa, you too will be terribly missed in the lost happiness and in the happiness that is always more difficult to find (but we will manage, you'll see...) without people like you.
A big hug to dear Giuliana and to her children Luca and Manuela.