Luca De Santi

“Luca De Santi is one of the most versatile pastry chefs in the recent past. In a world divided between pastry shops and restaurants, he moves from one to the other with serene concentration”. These are the words of Paolo Marchi on the pages of the Guida di Identità Golose 2015 (the last paper edition that is) presenting the award as best pastry chef of they year given to De Santi.

Born in 1979 in Vicenza, Luca is a professional pastry chef who always has a suitcase at hand: or perhaps this was the case since after many years of professional peregrinations in some of the most important places in Italian gastronomy, today it looks like Luca De Santi has found home in Milan, and in particular at Cesare Battisti’s Ratanà where, on top of being head pastry chef he also became the sous chef a few months ago.
 

De Santi’s road in the culinary world opened after the diploma from catering school in Recoaro Terme (Vicenza). As for the technical soundness any chef he’s happened to work with acknowledges him, he’s built it with the first experience in the kitchens of great hotels, such as Cipriani in Venice or Lapa Palace in Lisbon.

Then in 2002 another very important chance to grow arrives, when he lands at the court of Gualtiero Marchesi, at Albereta: hence Luca De Santi begins his journey in fine dining which he then continues, specialising more and more in a personal and original interpretation of plated desserts at tri-starred Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence where he stops for over five years, from 2005 to 2011, becoming its head pastry chef.

In his most recent past, De Santi left the world of signature cuisine for a short while to return to the pastry making laboratory at Peck’s, the Milanese institution. Yet restaurants call him in the most practical meaning of this word: a talent such as his could not go unnoticed in town.

Hence the consultancies for Nespor and Roncoroni’s Al Mercato and for Ratanà. The latter restaurant offers him the possibility of fully showing the completeness of his preparation and after a year as pastry chef Cesare Battisti asks him to become his second. And we’re sure the road of this professional, serious, meticulous and calm as well as eclectic and sparkling in his creations, will be characterised by many more milestones.

Arrivano così le consulenze per Al Mercato di Nespor e Roncoroni e per il Ratanà. Quest'ultimo ristorante gli offre la possibilità di dimostrare fino in fondo la completezza della sua preparazione e dopo un anno da capo pasticcere Cesare Battisti gli chiede di diventare anche il suo secondo. E siamo sicuri che la strada di questo professionista, tanto serio, meticoloso e mite di carattere quanto eclettico e spumeggiante nelle sue creazioni, sarà segnata da ancora grandi traguardi.