Recipes by Great Italian Chefs: Felice Lo Basso

With many years of professional experience gained both in Italy and abroad, Felice Lo Basso is known as a passionate and innovative Italian chef.

He studied cooking at Istituto Professionale Alberghiero Di Stato Perotti, and spent his first few seasons as a professional chef in Amalfi and Romagna. Here, he had a life-changing encounter with Vincenzo Cammerucci (then of the Lido di Cesenatico and now of Ca Savio in Ravenna). “He opened my heart to the kitchen and fuelled my passion for cooking,” says Felice.

He went on to have plenty more rewarding experiences in Romagna. He worked in the kitchen of the Ambasciatori Rimini and the Hotel Frand Riccione, then became head chef at Misano’s Byblos Disco Dinner Club and Palazzo Viviani Montegridolfo.

Felice’s cooking combines the down-to-earth vitality of his home, Puglia, with the passion and fire of Romagna, all mixed in with a classic Mediterranean love of seafood. After an internship at Robuchon at the Metropole Monte Carlo, his career took him far away from the sea, although in a location where fish and seafood are much beloved: Trentino-Alto Adige.

In 2003, Felice took over the kitchens at Alpen Royal Sport Hotel, a position he held the beginning of 2014, when the desire to grow led him to move on to Milan, home of the Expo, a six-month exhibition along the theme of sustainable food solutions. This is the perfect showcase for him to demonstrate his ability to successfully combine different elements: sea and mountain, meat and fish, vegetables and spices, vegetables and cheeses.

Felice is now happy to have taken over from Fabio Baldassare in the kitchen of Unico Milano, on the twentieth floor of the WJC Tower. This is a kitchen suspended between earth and sky, a stage in tune with his cooking, which is both linear and complex at the same time, combining both simplicity and depth of flavour.