An internationally shaped pastry chef, he refined his style in some of the world’s most influential kitchens before being named Italy’s Best Pastry Chef in 2018. With Lula, his workshop-bakery, he expresses a holistic idea of cuisine through bread, chocolate and pastry.
Originally from Puglia and trained as a pastry chef, Luca Lacalamita built his professional path across some of the most relevant kitchens in the global gastronomic landscape. Experiences at Gordon Ramsay in London, alongside Albert Adrià, and later with Massimo Bottura and Carlo Cracco, shaped both his technical discipline and a creative vision oriented toward constant research. This trajectory culminated in his role as head pastry chef at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, the three-Michelin-star restaurant where he earned the title Best Pastry Chef of Italy 2018.
After years in fine dining, he embraced a turning point: stepping away from Michelin-starred kitchens to focus on a project capable of uniting all his passions — from bread to pastry, from chocolate to the world of leavened goods. The idea took form in his hometown of Molfetta, in a space that would become a workshop devoted to research, exchange and daily craftsmanship. This is where Lula was born, a bakery-atelier that embodies the essence of his journey and his desire to create a place where he could express, with complete freedom, everything he had learned from observing, studying and working since childhood.
The heart of the project is rooted in his earliest experiences: afternoons spent in the old family bakery, between the scents of yeast and the gestures of traditional baking, and the fascination for bread that later led him to study the philosophy of sourdough bread. Dough became a narrative material: carefully selected flours, slow processes, textures that enter into dialogue with pastry and plated desserts. His philosophy gravitates around respect for raw ingredients, seasonality and an expressive style that privileges balance, purity and authenticity.
Today, Lula is Lacalamita’s creative center: a place where bread meets viennoiserie, where chocolate coexists with contemporary pastry, a workbench that reflects a mature vision uninterested in trends, building flavours through memory, precision and everyday gestures. The project stands as both synthesis and new beginning — a space where research and craftsmanship evolve without ostentation, offering a sweet-and-savory language that speaks sincerely of his territory and of the experiences he gathered around the world.
