The Alajmo family have been in the restaurant business for four generations. The jewel in their familial crown, "Le Calandre," has earned a reputation as one of Italy's finest restaurants. Its chef, Massimiliano (called "Max") is the only 26-year old Italian to boast a two-star rating in the famous Michelin red guide. His first star - another record - was obtained when he was only 22 years old, in collaboration with his mother.

Max is a chef who creates dishes first in his head and then in the kitchen, who makes notes on flavour combinations and cooking techniques like notations on a musical score, who trusts his sense of smell so completely that he can imagine the flavour of a finished dish just from the scent of the raw ingredients. He is an artist who is guided by his instincts: "I have to know where a piece of meat comes from. It's not enough for me just to taste the raw filet - I need to know the animal's origin in order to pin down the flavour of the herbs it ate."

Why? "So that I can use the same herbs when cooking it. For years this has been a fundamental rule of my cooking." Max Alajmo's passion for his ingredients applies not only to meat. Every morning he goes to the fruit market in Padua to buy provisions from Paolo, whose stall always displays the earliest produce. Later you'll run into him near the church of the Carmines, talking to the fishmonger Bragosso (whose name also refers to a fishing boat in his hometown, the Adriatic port of Chioggia.) Max is convinced that the success of a dish is completely dependent upon the quality of its ingredients. "I do not create anything - at the most I enhance," he says.

With their constant striving for perfection, the family has established a gastronomic shrine, drawing culinary pilgrims to Padua alongside the faithful who come to honour the town's most famous saint, Anthony. Adjoining the restaurant is Le Calandre pastry shop, the domain of mother Rita, who works from seven in the morning until midnight baking delicious pastries, mousses, brioches, croissants, pandori, panetonni - all without preservatives and using natural yeasts - as well as cakes like "pazientina," taken from a seventh-century Paduan recipe book, and for carnival time filled fritelle and crostoli which are fried exclusively in olive oil.