Andrea Antonini is the executive chef of the restaurant inside the Hotel Hassler, a Michelin star and one of the capital's benchmarks for signature cuisine. With a dense curriculum built up in the best starred restaurants headed by great masters such as Quique Dacosta, Joan Roca and Enrico Crippa, he has brought to Imàgo his brilliant gastronomic personality, which combines purity of flavour, creativity and dexterity.
Andrea Antonini, born in 1991, after many experiences abroad, became executive chef of the 1 Michelin starred restaurant Imàgo in Rome. After technical school and an experience in Australia, he returned to Italy and joined the brigade of chef Andrea Fusco's Michelin-starred restaurant Giuda Ballerino, with whom he stayed for a few years and from whom he understood what kind of approach to gastronomy he wanted to study and realise. He continued, again in Rome, at another Michelin-starred restaurant, Metamorfosi, led by chef Roy Caceres, before moving to Spain to the creativity workshop of 3-Michelin-starred Quique Dacosta, under the head of the creative department Juanfra Valiente, and after a short time to the kitchen.
"I found myself working with 50 people and I didn't know a word of Spanish, but for me it was the opportunity of a lifetime and I tried to give everything and take just as much. Creativity was everything. I had contacts with the great chefs of international cuisine, I was cooking for my myths and it felt like I was touching the sky with my finger".
After a little more than a year and a half, he enters the Roca Olympus, at the El Celler de Can Roca restaurant, 3 Michelin stars and best restaurant for the 50Best Restaurants, where he learns technique and avant-garde, but above all that it is possible to work with normal hours and weekly rests and to manage the human factor. At that time, he won the creativity award that is given to a member of the brigade each year, his mullet, panzanella and lemon being crowned on this occasion.
Due to a back problem, he decided to return to Italy and, after recovering, go to work for Enrico Crippa, chef at the Piazza Duomo restaurant in Alba, 3 Michelin stars, from whom he learnt rigour and method. After a few years, the call of Rome is strong and Antonini realises it is time to return home. He entered, on 5 April 2019, the Hotel Hassler at the behest of Roberto Wirth, who was looking for a young roman for his restaurant Imàgo, confirming, in just six months, the Michelin star. In December 2023, the L'Espresso Guide 2024 gives him the Best Young Chef Award.
Andrea Antonini is a dreamer with his feet firmly planted on the ground. Pragmatic, unconscious, curious, fussy, stubborn and ambitious, he leaves nothing to chance in his dishes where important lessons learnt in the past emerge. Like a sponge he absorbs and learns, tries and retries, observes and elaborates. Once the idea is born, the dish is determined by the seasonality of the ingredient. In each of his dishes, the place of honour goes to the vegetable, which he chooses according to the season, around which he combines the other ingredients and creates new tasty balances by ‘stealing’, not revisiting, traditional Italian and roman recipes.
"The customer who comes to Imàgo," the chef continues, "is international, he observes the beauty of Rome and wants to taste Italy. My culinary philosophy is to use only Made in Italy raw materials, to steal new ideas from the classic recipes of the Belpaese, to tell the story of my home, Rome, using the technique and experimentation I have learnt over the years. Those who come to our restaurant must be able to eat high quality Italian cuisine while having fun". He defines his cuisine as an oxymoron: "it takes a lot of manual skill and ability to make the customer play, you have to be very serious to create something very entertaining".
