About us

At 18 I couldn't think of my future as it is now. My passion for cooking is innate but unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to cultivate it as much as I would have liked. However, my love for cooking started very early because of my grandmother and my mom who introduced me to healthy home cooking. Since I was a child I was a restless spirit, this restlessness led me to become a very good customer of a small restaurant in Viterbo. Then, due to work, it was not possible to visit as much as I would have liked and therefore I could not taste their specialties. But my concern led me to propose to Renato if I could help them in the kitchen without pay of course. After a while, I became an assistant cook next to Renato and Paolo, and I was excited by these new feelings. This was my first practical experience and I owe a lot to the team of “LA CHIMERA”. Some time later, I found myself on vacation in Greece specifically in a picturesque village, Gythio, to visit my uncles. There I made the big decision to dive into the deep end, opening a small restaurant on the coastal road of this beautiful port. Helped at the beginning by my mom who stayed with me for the first 3 months, my sister Mariana and I continued this journey until 2004. But along the way I found that in a city with a conservative mentality I was not finding the expected response and so I decided to aim higher. All this led me in March 2004 to take a trip to Kalamata with a friend of mine and current partner "Dimitris Destakos", a remarkable and consistent person with a passion for looking for the best of the best. Since then we have gradually managed to introduce new ideas and new products such as wild mushrooms, asparagus and seafood into the culinary circle of the region. So we created a perfect team and an ideal reality in Kalamata.