Respect for rules, discipline, and collaboration. Express your talent at most best, change to improve, plan your own work, work in a team, know how to listen to the clients, and never give up. This are the advice that Bartolini presents to the young future chefs, almost as a sort of decalogue. In fact, he is an excellent example for students and his fellow chefs. Born in 1979, in the enchanting Tuscany, he was the only Michelin Guide chef to earn four stars in 2016.
During and after Hotellerie School, Enrico Bartolini developed a strong passion for food and haute cuisine that led him to perfect his skills abroad in the kitchens of great masters in Paris and London. Still, it was in Italy that he concluded his training with the great chef Massimiliano Alajmo. His first star arrived at just 29 years old in his restaurant “Le Robinie”. After that, he opened eight restaurants in six months in 2016. Everything makes him a great self-made man who has given up having so many covers to pursue quality over time.
The continuous desire to grow is the fuel for these openings and research, rewarded by the guides with awards that make him more successful and famous in haute cuisine. With the latest Michelin Star in 2021, the sum of stars for Enrico Bartolini rises to nine. This extraordinary result confirms his position as the most starred chef in Italy. He also conquers the fourth position in the world, ranking after Alain Ducasse, Pierre Gagnaire and Martín Berasategui. Located in Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Veneto, Enrico Bartolini’s six starred restaurants embody a method of thinking and working to enhance the territory, biodiversity, and talented people.
Recently he has also opened new restaurants in Milan, “Anima”, a fine dining restaurant, and “Vertigo”, a contemporary osteria, and “Horus” in Sanremo, in the context of Miramare The Palace. Enrico Bartolini has a profoundly reflective but equally concrete personality that inspires his cooking philosophy. Enrico Bartolini is the spokesman of a personal style that combines innovation, simplicity, and the search for quality and balance, linked to past values and yet an interpreter of contemporaneity. The creativity that distinguishes his dishes is not just an exercise in style but a desire to amaze and surprise with unique, distinct and recognisable flavours. The conscious and responsible use of ingredients marries a gastronomic thought that refers to tradition, interpreting it with modernity and lightness. The excellent care in every single detail is the expression of their eclectic spirit of Bartolini. Like a contemporary craftsman, he pursues an almost maniacal aesthetic perfection in every dish to give his guests an unforgettable gastronomic experience made of flavours, colours and scents that remain impressed in their memory. A craftsman like his father was, in an entirely different sector. Still, precision and attention are in his DNA and there, they are recognised as sincere ingredients in a particular dish.
Enrico Bartolini Restaurants
The Enrico Bartolini*** restaurant at the Mudec-Museum of Cultures in Milan offers true gourmet art, simple to the eye but extremely sophisticated to the palate. Accompanying Enrico in this factory of high gastronomy are Davide Boglioli, executive chef, and Sebastien Ferrara, restaurant manager and expert sommelier.
The Glam** at Palazzo Venart in Venice has its resident chef Donato Ascani: his cuisine is the expression of a popular Venetian gastronomic tradition revisited in an avant-garde key and at the same time proposes alternatives of contemporary taste that exalt the extraordinary flavours of the Lagoon.
The Casual Ristorante* in Bergamo reinterprets the gastronomic culture of the area in a contemporary key and offers tasty, traditional cuisine, but with room for innovation. The resident chef is Marco Galtarossa, flanked by Manager Marco Locatelli, a professional sommelier.
La Trattoria Enrico Bartolini* inside L’Andana Resort in Castiglione della Pescaia, is an elegant gourmet osteria. Bruno Cossio, the resident chef, revisits Tuscan tradition in a contemporary key and offers dishes of outstanding balance. The savoury and delicate flavours of the sea go hand in hand with the intense flavours of the land.
Locanda del Sant’Uffizio* inside the relais of the same name in Cioccaro di Penango. The menu is a tribute to territory and its cuisine, a hymn to Italian biodiversity expressed on the table. Resident chef Gabriele Boffa is assisted in the dining room by Francesco Palumbo.
Il Poggio Rosso* restaurant in Borgo San Felice in Castelnuovo Berardenga. The gastronomic proposal is here to signify the most authentic tradition and innovation of international taste, with a young Colombian resident chef, Juan Camilo Quintero.
Ristorante Anima and the contemporary Vertigo Osteria, both located in Milan at the hotel Milano Verticale-UNA, offer two different modern cuisine concepts in a restaurant run by Michele Cobuzzi.
Ristorante Horus at the Miramare The Palace in Sanremo sees as its protagonists the products of the territory, therefore local fish and vegetables from the Ligurian gardens, in the hands of resident chef Masayuki Kondo, originally from Tokyo, who combines Japanese rigour in its preparation.
Discover more @ Enrico Bartolini World
Article edit by Nadia Toppino
Food, Wine & Hospitality Journalist