๐ฎ๐น Italy ยท Italian cuisine ยท b. 1974
The self-taught Abruzzese chef who turned a family pastry shop into a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
Niko Romito is one of the most quietly influential chefs in contemporary Italian fine dining. His restaurant Reale, located in a restored medieval monastery in the small Abruzzese town of Castel di Sangro, holds three Michelin stars โ one of only twelve Italian restaurants to do so โ and is consistently ranked among the world's leading restaurants. Romito is entirely self-taught, has never staged in another professional kitchen, and arrived at the work only after his father's death in 2000 forced him to abandon an economics degree at Rome's Sapienza University and return to run the family pastry shop and trattoria with his sister Cristiana.
The transition from country trattoria to fine dining took six years. By 2006 Reale had its first Michelin star; the second followed in 2009 and the third in 2014, the same year the family relocated the restaurant from the town of Rivisondoli to a restored fifteenth-century Capuchin monastery on the road from Castel di Sangro to Roccaraso. The new site, called Casadonna, also houses Spazio โ Romito's culinary school, which since 2011 has trained more than two hundred Italian chefs and is now regarded as the most influential alternative to ALMA as a path into the country's professional kitchens.
Since 2017 Romito has run the restaurants of the Bvlgari Hotels group, operating dining rooms in Milan, Beijing, Dubai, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Moscow and London โ a contract that has made his vision of essential, technique-driven Italian cooking the most widely exported in the world today. His best-known dish, the Assoluto di cipolle, parmigiano e zafferano โ an absolute of onion with a parmigiano sauce and a saffron drop โ has been on the Reale menu since 2009 and is regularly cited by Italian food critics as the single most important dish of the post-Adriร generation.
Subtraction. Romito's cooking is built on the explicit refusal of garnish, sauce-painting and the conventional vocabulary of fine-dining plating. A finished plate at Reale is normally one ingredient, one supporting ingredient and one liquid โ and the technique work is invested in producing the cleanest, most concentrated possible expression of each. He calls the approach 'cucina essenziale' (essential cooking) and has written that the goal of three decades of work has been to remove everything that is not strictly necessary to communicate flavour.
Three Michelin stars (since 2014); housed in a restored fifteenth-century Capuchin monastery.
Casual restaurant staffed by graduates of Romito's culinary school of the same name.
Dining-room restaurants in the Bvlgari Hotels group worldwide, operated under Romito's contract since 2017.
Romito's roadside fast-food concept serving fried chicken, rotisserie meats and breads to a single quality standard.
These recipes from our database reflect the italian cooking tradition that Niko works in. They are not direct reproductions of Niko's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
โI do not want to add to a plate. I want to take away until only the dish remains.โ
โ Identitร Golose conference (2016)
โI have never worked in another chef's kitchen. Everything I know I learned from books, from failures and from feeding the people in my town.โ
โ Corriere della Sera interview (2014)
Father dies suddenly; Romito leaves his economics studies at Sapienza to run the family pastry shop in Rivisondoli with sister Cristiana.
Converts the family business from pastry shop and trattoria to a fine-dining restaurant named Reale.
Reale awarded its first Michelin star.
Awarded second Michelin star; debuts the Assoluto di cipolle.
Founds Spazio, a culinary school for young Italian chefs, on the site of the new Reale.
Reale relocates to the restored Capuchin monastery at Casadonna, between Castel di Sangro and Roccaraso.
Awarded third Michelin star โ the only three-star restaurant in Abruzzo.
Signs the contract to run all Bvlgari Hotels restaurants worldwide; first opens in Beijing and Dubai.
Publishes Reale with Phaidon โ first English-language monograph of his work.
Yes. Romito has never staged or worked in another chef's professional kitchen. He learned to cook by reading classical Italian and French texts and by experimenting on the menu of the family restaurant after his father's sudden death in 2000 obliged him to take over the business at age twenty-six.
Reale is located at Casadonna, a restored fifteenth-century Capuchin monastery on the road between Castel di Sangro and Roccaraso in the mountains of Abruzzo, in central Italy. The site is approximately three hours' drive east of Rome and is also home to Romito's culinary school Spazio.
The Assoluto di cipolle, parmigiano e zafferano is Romito's most famous dish: a clear, intensely concentrated bouillon of onion (produced by a multi-stage extraction process invented at Reale) served in a bowl with a sauce of aged parmigiano cream and a single drop of saffron infusion. It has been on the menu since 2009 and is widely regarded as one of the defining Italian dishes of the past twenty years.
Spazio is the culinary school Romito founded in 2011 at the Casadonna site to train young Italian chefs in his methods. It runs a one-year residential programme and operates two restaurants โ in Rome and Milan โ staffed entirely by graduates of the school as a postgraduate working environment.
Since 2017 Romito has held the exclusive contract to design and operate the principal restaurants of the Bvlgari Hotels group. Under the name Il Ristorante โ Niko Romito, his menus are served in Bvlgari hotels in Milan, Beijing, Dubai, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Moscow and London, with new openings in Los Angeles and Miami announced.
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