I’ve been cooking professionally for over 15 years, but my relationship with food started long before that — at my grandfather’s table in Sicily, where everything came from the land and nothing was wasted. I trained at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, founded by Carlo Petrini of Slow Food, where I learned to think about food not just as technique but as culture, ecology, and connection. I’m an ambassador of the university to this day.

In Catania, I founded the Comunità Educativa Gastronomica Etnea — Sicily’s first educational gastronomic community, affiliated with Slow Food — where I use cooking as a tool for education and social inclusion with at-risk youth.

As a private chef, I cook across Sicily for international travelers, mostly Americans and British families. Every dinner is built around the people at the table: I source ingredients from producers I trust, I use the whole plant, and I tell the story behind every dish. My clients don’t just eat — they understand what they’re eating and why it matters.

The dish I’m most proud of? Cuturro con Ragù di Cavolo Trunzo — an ancient Sicilian durum wheat polenta topped with a ragù made from a nearly extinct kohlrabi that is now a Slow Food Presidium. Two forgotten peasant foods, reunited on one plate. The entire plant is used. Nothing is wasted. It’s my philosophy in a single dish.