“It’s like ‘Game of Thrones, no?” jokes Massimo Bottura of his wolf motif T-shirt. The animalia was courtesy of Gucci, which is run by his old grade school chum Marco Bizzarri. The two, along with Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, have collaborated on a range of projects, the latest of which is the Osteria at Gucci Garden in Florence, opened last month.

“We shared the same desk for five years in high school. He was living like 15 kilometers from Modena, and usually he was spending time in my house, to do homework and study, or he was calling my mom directly and she was cooking for everyone,” Bottura says of Bizzarri. At the time, Bottura was a serious soccer player but he quit sports to focus on his studies in order to become a lawyer and work in the family oil business. His mother, he says, was the one who pushed him to follow his passion for food.