The Michelin star has been awarded to a project that is not simply “a nice seafood restaurant.” Da Lucio has challenged all the traditional practices of seafood cuisine, choosing to work almost exclusively with locally caught fish, often of large size, and to make use of every part of the fish, including the offal.
Cover photo by Lido Vannucchi
WHEN THE FISH REVOLUTION BECOMES A “SYSTEM”
The scene is set at the Teatro Regio in Parma, with red Michelin lights and white jackets that can be recognized from a distance. When they call Da Lucio, a young man wearing the restaurant's cap, born in 1994 and Romagnolo through and through, takes to the stage: Jacopo Ticchi. For Rimini, this is the first time this name has appeared alongside a Michelin star; for those who have been following his work for years, however, it is confirmation of something that was already written in the Adriatic networks.
The 2026 Guide lists it among the 22 new Italian restaurants with one star, one of two new starred establishments in Emilia-Romagna along with Cavallino in Maranello. On the Riviera, this also means something else: Da Lucio becomes one of the very few fine dining beacons—while remaining outside the more rigid labels—in an area historically accustomed to seaside trattorias “as they have always been.”
From Riccione to the world, returning home “in the middle of the sea”
To understand why this star weighs more than others, we need to go back a few years. Jacopo was born in Cattolica, grew up between hotel school in Riccione and the kitchens of the Riviera, then – with his diploma in his pocket – left for Australia, where he encountered international restaurants and a different idea of product and service.
On his return, he moved to Pietro Leemann's Joia in Milan, where he remained for four years: there he learned to interpret raw ingredients with an almost “spiritual” eye, to remove rather than add, to use technique as a tool and never as an end in itself. Then it was back to Spain, the world of tapas, the game of sharing. When he returned permanently to Romagna, with the experience of Nécessaire Bistrot, his obsession began: the aging of fish. In 2019, Trattoria Da Lucio was born; over the years, that project transformed and moved until it arrived where it always wanted to be: literally in the middle of the sea, in the Darsena di Rimini, a restaurant suspended over the water that various newspapers have described as a “temple of aged fish” and one of the most talked-about seafood restaurants in Italy.
The conscience of the sea: from head to tail
The Michelin star has been awarded to a project that is not simply “a nice seafood restaurant.” Da Lucio has challenged all the traditional practices of seafood cuisine, choosing to work almost exclusively with locally caught fish, often of large size, and to make the most of it from head to tail, including offal. The heart of the work is dry aging: controlled maturation of the fish—temperature, humidity, and different times depending on the species and size—to concentrate flavor, modify texture, and amplify aromatic nuances. This technique was borrowed from the world of meat and rigorously applied to seafood, to which Ticchi also dedicated his book “Oltre la frollatura” (Beyond Dry Aging), the first Italian volume entirely devoted to this topic.
However, this is not just an exercise in style: the menus feature reimagined brodetti (fish soups), fish heads to be picked clean, matured fillets, and humble and noble cuts treated equally, creating a dining experience that seeks to convey a sense of “awareness of the sea” rather than simple hedonistic enjoyment. Reviews speak of an “exciting and effervescent” address, a trattoria-non-trattoria that has changed the way fish is served along the Romagna coast.
A restaurant that influences the system, not just the Riviera
In recent years, Da Lucio has become one of the most cited case studies when it comes to innovation in fish in Italy. Critics and guides point to it as a benchmark for the maturation of fish and the integral use of the animal; other chefs look to its work as a guide, with results that are not always up to par, a sign of how fascinating the model is to imitate but difficult to replicate.
Meanwhile, Jacopo is building a profile that goes beyond the restaurant: guest on MasterChef Italia, talking about dry aging in front of a large audience, author of a book that has become a reference text for professionals and enthusiasts, protagonist of a series of awards: from Care's Young Ethical Chef Award to Forbes' 100 Innovators Under 30, from Fortune's 40 Under 40 – Food Industry to the title of Best Emerging Chef for Food & Travel Italia, to Gambero Rosso's Best Tasting Menu award. In other words: Da Lucio is not an isolated episode, but the center of a small constellation that brings together technical reflection, local narrative, and contemporary gastronomy.
What does the Michelin star mean for Da Lucio
Within this context, the 2026 Michelin star does not come as a surprise, but rather as a natural progression. The Guide describes Da Lucio as a contemporary seafood restaurant, offering high-quality cuisine with a clear personal touch, and includes it among the 22 new stars that are redrawing the gastronomic map of Italy. For Rimini, this means having a restaurant in Darsena that takes the discourse beyond “fried seafood” and the usual summer postcards, without losing the Romagna soul of conviviality and shared dining. For the Michelin system, it means recognizing a radical but inclusive approach, which is not confined to rigid fine dining, but remains accessible to a curious and non-specialist audience.
The star rewards: a technical vision (the systematic application of dry aging to fish), ethical consistency (only locally caught fish, integral use, attention to the Adriatic ecosystem), and a territorial narrative that starts with fishing grandparents and ends with a restaurant suspended over the water, a meeting point between memory and future.
A generational symbol
Looking at Jacopo Ticchi with his “Da Lucio” cap under the lights of Parma, it is difficult not to see him as a generational symbol. At just over thirty years of age, with a restaurant named after his son and a cuisine “in the middle of the sea” that focuses on maturation, ecosystems, and memory, he embodies a different way of being in the kitchen today: rooted and visionary, technical and popular at the same time.
The star simply marks this trajectory on an international map. The rest, on the suspended tables of the Darsena, continues as always: fish heads to be picked clean, intense broths, tiny cuts transformed into memorable bites, glasses that tell the story of the Adriatic. For those who love to read Michelin beyond the list of names, Da Lucio is just that: the sign that a revolution that began in a small seaside trattoria can become a new language that is recognized, studied, and—as of today—even starred.
Contacts
Da Lucio
Viale Ortigara, 80, 47921 Rimini RN
Phone: 0541 161 2020
