The Chef
Maurizio Camilli has been the Chef of “La Piazza Restaurant” since 2013.
Maurizio is a great connoisseur of cuisine, he has built his profession by working from a very young age in numerous prestigious restaurants in Italy and abroad, earning numerous awards and recognitions.
His cuisine is distinguished by the sophistication with which he always manages to come up with elegant and surprising combinations. Speaking about his work, he said:
“Mine is a simple cuisine with clean and clear-cut tastes, based on an assiduous and dogged search for quality in raw materials, in the freshness and genuineness of the products that the earth offers us, respecting its seasonality. The cook’s flair is then to be able to combine different products with elegance and delicacy in order to succeed in surprising and exciting.”
Amidst a thousand recipes, dishes and smiles (his charge of human sympathy is contagious), he also manages to generously devote part of his time to his young students to whom he teaches the secrets of haute cuisine: “being able to be in contact with so many young people who want to learn the profession of cooking is a great inspiration for me.”
Chef Camilli is the soul of the “Piazza dei Mestieri Restaurant,” in a short time leading it to be permanently reported in the Michelin Guide and other prestigious publications.
The staff
“How would you define your cuisine?
I don’t like definitions by definition. They restrict instead of open, and cooking is openness to the world and the people in it.”
Like any great chef, Maurizio Camilli aims not only at an assiduous pursuit for the quality of ingredients or imagination from which his dishes are created, but also at having a well-trained team both in the kitchen and in the dining room. If Azis Grembi, a 2008 graduate of Piazza dei Mestieri and Second Chef at La Piazza Restaurant since 2012, is his right-hand man at the stove, Olga Peher is undoubtedly his right-hand man in the dining room.
A Maitre de Hall who has not only succeeded in making people appreciate the services of La Piazza Restaurant even more, but has also become a true connoisseur of wine and craft beer. For a wine weekend, Olga and Chef Camilli can recommend the best pairings to fine wines, carefully selected for our Wine List, and craft beers brewed at Birrificio La Piazza by Master Brewer, Riccardo Miscioscia, who has received numerous awards for his brassic creations.
“Maurizio believes that the key to the success of craft beer in Italy lies in its enhancement through food: one should, in his opinion, know how to propose beer in the right pairing. Italy will never have the numbers of pure beer drinkers that there are in the north, but as a country of great gastronomic culture it can give it added value through the right pairings. Craft beer like wine needs to be tasted and valued.”
