Home Cooking & Private Chef
A chef at your own table
Some evenings do not belong in a restaurant. A big birthday at home. Dinner for twelve where nobody should be stuck in the kitchen. A celebration in a house that has no kitchen for eighty guests. Those evenings are what Giuseppe is for.
One of ours, in every way that counts
Giuseppe Dario Caliandro is not on our payroll and does not cook in our kitchen. He belongs to the house all the same – the way some people belong to a family without being related to it. When someone asks us for a chef to cook at their home, we give them his name. And no one else’s.
His own house is called Romario Maison. He cooks privately, in Berlin, in Puglia, and wherever his guests gather.
Ceglie Messapica, and what followed
Giuseppe comes from Ceglie Messapica, a small white town in Puglia that Italians drive across the region to eat in. His first kitchen was his family’s: tomatoes drying on the terrace, orecchiette rolled by hand, bread from a wood oven.
Then the catering college of his home town, and ALMA, Italy’s school for dough, bread and fresh pasta. After that he left: a five-star kitchen in Dublin. Le Saint Estève in Aix-en-Provence, one Michelin star, under Julien Le Goff – where he developed a deep attention to detail and mastered French haute cuisine, which he regards today as a second foundation of his culinary identity. Head chef at a chalet in Courchevel, his first properly private kitchen, one table at a time.
Most recently he ran the kitchen at Berta in Berlin, the local house of the Israeli Michelin-starred chef Assaf Granit. Ten years, six countries.
How an evening comes together
It begins with a conversation rather than a menu: who is coming, what the occasion means, what you want people to remember. From that Giuseppe builds the menu, buys the produce, cooks, serves – and leaves the kitchen cleaner than he found it.
It works for two people and for a wedding party. For one evening, or for a whole holiday with a menu that follows the market each morning.
Three menus to start from
Tradizione is the country cooking of his childhood – orecchiette with tomato and basil, parmigiana, friselle, the grill with bombette and gnummarieddi.
Fish Art tells the sea between the Adriatic and the Ionian: Gallipoli red prawns, sea bass alla Gallipolina, spirulina spaghettone with clams.
Astoria is his signature tasting menu. An ode to the tomato to open, orecchiette hidden beneath a warm ricotta mousse, pork fillet in three feelings.
None of them is ever cooked the same way twice. They are the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.
Hands in the flour
If you would rather make it yourself: Giuseppe runs pasta workshops for private groups. Orecchiette and maritati shaped by hand, antipasti from small producers in between, and at the end everyone eats what they made together. Four hours, at your home or at a place of your choosing.
Enquiries
A date, a place, a number of guests – that is enough to begin. Write to us and we will put you and Giuseppe in touch.
Giuseppe works independently under the name Romario Maison. Any agreement for a private evening is made between you and him, not with our restaurant. We make the introduction because we vouch for him. More about his work: romariomaison.com