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The “Cracco boy” who is redesigning luxury in Portofino: sustainability beyond slogans by Mattia Pecis

by:
Martino Lapini
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Mattia Pecis' true strength? A way of thinking that goes beyond the kitchen and sheds light on the “hidden” guardians of his work, from farmers to fishermen. This is how Cracco Portofino has always shunned the slogan “sustainable luxury” and gourmet washing.

Photo credits: Vincenzo Moraca


Allow me a provocative thought. The guys from Last Generation would find plenty of manure above Portofino—from cows, goats, donkeys, chickens, and even pigeons—to spread around as they please. It's a shame that the fruit of their labor isn't used to protest, but rather to feed the terraces of the Fescion Farmers, a duo composed of Fabio and Federica who, listen up, grow and harvest continuously for the restaurant Cracco in Portofino. Too much effort to get up there? Believe it or not, every day the Fescion farmers make this effort to carry on an agricultural tradition that is in danger of being swallowed up by the mountains.

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Fescion makes you smile. And that is absolutely the meaning of their name. The best dressed are the vegetables and flowers in their fields, like the nasturtium that Mattia Pecis hands me, urging me to eat it. What a surprise to discover how a flower can have such a pungent, almost spicy taste. Federica and Fabio wear boots and work shirts. They are heroic farmers who have found, more than a luxury restaurant, a shoulder to lean on. Usually, we lean on our friends, but here we come close to that. Sharing hard work gives rise to the most unexpected things, distances shrink, and prejudices are smoothed out. Hard work is fashionable.

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Since Mattia Pecis took over the restaurant in Portofino, vegetables have always played a leading role. Let's refresh your memory with the names of Iva and Alberto, the elderly farming couple whom Mattia chose as his surrogate grandparents and who supplied his kitchens with the first fruits of the earth. Their advanced age naturally marked a passing of the torch. However, Iva is responsible for bringing Mattia and Federica together. A few months ago, Federica was dividing her time between the terraces of the Fescion Farmers and a nursery frequented by Iva. She saw strange seeds passing by and overheard the strangest requests for vegetables she could ever have imagined in those places. Time passed, and Iva's requests did not lose their ‘exotic’ quality, so Federica made up her mind. She went to Iva and asked her about the person who had placed the orders. Iva tells her about Mattia. Federica, who has now put her shyness aside, asks Iva to introduce her to him. Iva doesn't need to be asked twice, perhaps already sensing something, and arranges for them to meet. Federica had no idea what she was getting herself into. Mattia has a Mary Poppins-style backpack from which he pulls out ideas that would make anyone's head spin.

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Yet, as we trudge up and down the terraces, the atmosphere is anything but tense. Mattia and Federica show us the crops they have planted, the small greenhouses, and the preparations they have made to make the land fruitful and respectful. Even fish play their part. The scraps that Mattia cannot use or recycle (intestines, other entrails, bones) become part of the mixture of self-produced natural resources used on the terraces. Posidonia seaweed is used for potatoes. The potatoes are sown and a layer of seaweed is left on top of the soil. The tuber is like a sponge and absorbs the salts from the posidonia, increasing its flavor. This means that less salt is needed when preparing dishes that include these potatoes.

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The logic behind terraced planting is to optimize space. Federica explains the law of the three sisters: zucchini, corn, and beans are grown together to benefit each other. Corn provides structural support for the beans, which are climbing plants, and also protects the sisters from the wind. Beans are nitrogen fixers, so they enrich the soil and make it more fertile. Zucchini have large leaves that cover the ground like mulch, helping to maintain soil moisture and prevent weeds from growing. In heroic crops like Fabio and Federica's, efficiency is survival.

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Meanwhile, Fabio's father Ciro is building a pulley to make it easier to transport the crates of vegetables from the bottom to the top. His grumbling voice is proof that nothing can be taken for granted on a 200-meter slope. He would like to leave a key in every lock—the chicken coop, the tool shed, the donkey and cow stables, and every door on the way up and down—because when you forget one, you can imagine the distance the saints you invoke have to travel. I did well to bring a change of clothes for lunch. Even if the signs of sweat and dirt are the precursors of what Mattia transforms and co-creates every day. From a terrace to a terrace. From the side of the mountain to the seafront. Below us, tourists swarm, satisfied with just an hour of beauty. Up there, from the fescion, there was a moment when the bees swarmed out of their hives, making their communal presence resound.

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Perhaps this is the difference between those who are satisfied with the slogan “sustainable luxury,” which does not require much commitment and sounds almost like gourmet washing, and those who have a buzz in their heads that does not allow them to settle for less. Mattia insisted that I see behind the scenes and meet the guardians of his work. He wanted to introduce me to his community, made up of people who do not see themselves as individuals, even if they sometimes seem solitary, such as a talented chef or a maître d', in a place that is bustling for six months of the year and then spends the other six months gazing at its beauty reflected in the sea. Simone Lucini, sous chef, and Valeria Corona, maître, are part of this community. Together with them is the entire team that works in Portofino, brought together by Mattia and Carlo Cracco, who believe that sharing and community life are a necessary good, not a luxury.

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Even the fescion farmers are part of the team, as are some fishermen from Portofino who now feel comfortable calling Mattia even while he is working to deliver exceptional peaches. It's like when something crazy happens and you can't help yourself, you have to call or text a friend right away to tell them. These are normal things, the overflowing humanity that breaks even the densest nets, the ones we often build ourselves to protect our freedom. Instead, we end up imprisoning it in packs of habits, in slippery rocks of “that's just the way it is.” Some customers have asked Mattia to tell them more, to show them what's behind it all.

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Long live busybodies, long live those who aren't satisfied with just sitting there, even when they're paying. When you go to Cracco in Portofino—and not just there, mind you, thank God—you're not going to eat at an exclusive fine dining restaurant. If you listen, if you really observe what is happening for a moment, you will perceive the high level of training that is being served to you. And suddenly your reservation becomes a summons, a chance to participate. Mattia is the chef with the backpack, and I don't think he'll ever take it off. We would all do well to dust off our own and put them on our shoulders.

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The dishes

Mattia had never used meat in his menus before. He would have continued along the same lines—fish and vegetables—had he not met a former chef who had become a farmer in the mountains above Ventimiglia. He had very few animals and crazy ideas. Mattia also gets some refermented wines from him. When he tasted the meat of his lambs, the decision was easy. Lamb and squid is a dish in which meat and fish complement each other perfectly. The lamb is raw, because “cooking it would have ruined it,” marinated in a koji sauce, fermented coriander berries, and a little lamb stock. Wild fennel is added to layer the bitterness and then covered with a carpaccio of giant squid marinated in fennel. Wild thyme and savory are the springtime topping. The chewiness of the squid, the delicacy of the lamb, the aroma of the flowers. Complete.

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Orto is the result of a collaboration between Mattia and the Fescion Farmers, a distillation of vegetable complexity that expresses all the freshness of those who profess agricultural unity rather than simply exploiting the land. The dish is presented as a treasure chest in which you can also place the plant that symbolizes this season, the taccola. A cream of raw almonds, almost like yogurt, carrot and pumpkin juice as a sweetener, and then a concert of vegetables from the garden, raw, grilled, and marinated. Snow peas, peas, radishes, elderflowers, rose petals, and a nasturtium flower with three-year-fermented nasturtium inside, which looked like a peaty whiskey gel. Make love to the flavor of vegetables.

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Before sharing more of Mattia's creative ideas, there is a risotto worth mentioning. Rice, sea urchin cream, shrimp, and rue. In a high-end restaurant overlooking the sea, this is something that could, in some ways, be considered a classic. Deep down, we hope that these classics are truly timeless and that we don't give in to any kind of cancel culture. A monumental dish in terms of execution, in which the rue brings out the bitterness, harmonizing with the sweetness of the shrimp and the saltiness of the sea urchins.

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Scarola is a dish created to achieve a double texture. The escarole is stuffed with a tapenade and then grilled. It is placed on a bed of prescinseua sauce. Raw vegetables from the garden, including thirty-two varieties of lettuce and flowers, serve as a fresh topping for the escarole. A drizzle of rose balsamic vinegar, obtained by macerating rose petals, completes the second vegetable gem on Mattia's menu.

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The dessert deserves a closer look, as does the fish. They had never tasted such delicious rock mullet. Mattia arrives at the table with the pan. The mullet is opened like a book, the skin is crispy. Already, the eyes are satisfied by the perfect cooking. The first bite causes you to tilt your head back slightly, perhaps to look up at the sky, to give thanks for the sea before us. Paired with vegetables from the garden, it is a dish to swoon over, a perfect storm.

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Even at the end, Mattia tries to make an impact. Millefoglie di alga is a dish that is bold in its conception and execution, even if not entirely satisfying. The starting point was the challenge of creating a millefeuille without butter or flour. Mattia, Simone, and the team opted for sea lettuce, a seaweed that grows in abundance in the nearby coves. The seaweed is desalted, seasoned with elderflower, and dried in the oven. Between the layers is a diplomat cream and salted caramel. The finish is truly crunchy, if not for the seaweed's tendency to stick to the teeth and palate once moistened.

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Cracco Portofino is a restaurant, the frontispiece of a community of men and women who, within the confines of conventions, roles, impeccable service, and Instagram-worthy cuisine, impose their imperfect human storm. The kind you want to return to, even without eating.

Cracco Portofino

Molo Umberto I, 9, 16034 Portofino GE

Phone: 0185 163 6026

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