Salvatore Bianco

Offering fine dining in Naples is not like offering it elsewhere. In a land where even air is edible and everything is tasty; where they had street food even before someone invented it; experiments are daring under the weight of such juicy tradition. It’s like being Degas and painting in Place du Tertre in Montmartre among crowds of honest practitioners and expecting to excel. Indeed, there have always been few Michelin stars here.

One of the three current ones are held by someone who is surely daring, Salvatore Bianco from Torre del Greco, born in 1978. After a pirouette in numerous and different places Capri, Chianti, Sankt Moritz, Milan, and then Gualtiero Marchesi’s Roman spin-off Osteria dell’Orso) five years ago he returned to his homeland to guide the restaurants at hotel Romeo, overlooking Molo Beverello. Here Achille Lauro liked watching his ships leave and arrive. The top restaurant of the hotel is indeed named after him and his nickname (Il Comandante) offering a view of the sea that has no equal, the Gulf of Naples in which his majesty Vesuvius dips in, surrounded by what many people consider the most up-to-date city in Italy.

Here the calm Salvatore gives the final surprise to clients amazed by such beauty with elegant and composed dishes, elaborated with “juìcio” and endless talent, trying hard to touch as little as possible (chefs are like referees, the less you see them, the better they are), mixing traditions with products that come from all over: anise, cardamom, turmeric go side by side with pasta from Gragnano, buffalo milk mozzarella and beans from Controne. And then veal, beef, pork, pigeon because as traditional in the south, there is seafood but traditions are linked to the earth, and meat was the most desired food.