Raffaele Lenzi's Eye Is on the Stars
The Italian chef has cooked his way through many Michelin-starred kitchens. After earning a first star of his own, he has deep thoughts about the uphill path to the next one.
Raffaele Lenzi is executive chef for Sereno Hotels, overseeing the restaurants and food at their hotel properties in Lake Como, Italy, and the Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy. His work at Ristorante al Lago at the Como location earned a Michelin star in 2018, not least for his multi-track menus that encompass both traditional cuisine and “contrast and contradiction.” I interviewed Lenzi on the Il Sereno terrace overlooking Lake Como before service, when I was passing through the area on vacation—probably my first in-person interview since the pandemic.
Tell me about growing up in Naples and getting into cooking.
I was born Naples in 1984. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure I would do this kind of a job. I was playing football and going to the theater. But then I thought if I cook, I could stay out of trouble, and learn another language and another culture. But now that I’m a chef, it’s a bit different.
How so?
Because I take my work with me when I go to sleep, too. Except when I’m with my son or my wife, I’m always thinking about how I can improve, how I can work with my guys. That’s how I work as a chef.
What was your first job cooking in a restaurant?
First was with my uncle. It was just to get some money, working on the weekends or when I had time. My really important experience was in London. I was 18. I went to London just for traveling. There was in company that I don’t think exists anymore in London that had 12 restaurants. I spent two years there, and then I moved to New York. That was to get more experience, learning about the people, learning the language.
Where did you work in New York?
Osteria Laguna on 42nd Street between 1st and 2nd avenues, and another one was Freedom or Liberty, something like that. I was still very, very young. After New York, I moved to Spain for a couple of months, then one year in Naples at a fine-dining restaurant. Then I moved to southern Italy, to Verona, with chef Bruno Barbieri at Villa del Quar—a Relais & Châteaux, two-Michelin-star restaurant.
What roles in the kitchen were you playing in these jobs?
In Naples I was commis, when I was very, very young. In London, I was a commis then chef. In New York, there were no titles, it didn’t matter, it was just life. And then when I moved to to Bruno Barbieri, I became chef de partie. Then I moved to Milan, and Bulgari. I think that was the was the first new restaurant concept for a hotel in Italy. More modern, not too much classic.
I spent two years at Bulgari, and then my passion for gastronomic cuisine was too much. I moved again, to the Amalfi Coast—Palazzo Sasso, now called Palazzo Avino—Rossellini’s restaurant, two Michelin stars.
How was Rossellini’s different from Bulgari?
Bulgari was Italian—Milanese—and all people can understand it. More comfortable, very accessible to everyone. Palazzo Sasso was more gastronomical with a southern Italy concentration. Plus it was a five-star hotel. So we get both things—gastronomy-focused guests and hotel guests—and we try to make them all happy.
After Palazzo I moved again, and spent a couple of years at Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda as junior sous chef. Two Michelin stars. A small, small place. Palazzo Sasso had about 50 rooms. Villa Feltrinelli, just 20 rooms. It’s a completely different movie.
In what way?
With 20 rooms, you just have the perfect number of guests from the hotel and outside the hotel. You almost never do more than 55 guests in the restaurant. So 20 rooms is perfection. I think it’s the ideal number.
After Villa Feltrinelli, I moved to Milan again, and opened the Armani hotel as executive sous chef. So Milan again, crazy things again. Moda! But the hotel has 105 rooms. I had to do my work like construction. It’s almost impossible to manage. I was there two years, and after that, it was time to become a full chef. If you want to become a chef in Milan, you have to accept a compromise. So I decided to open a small restaurant. I don’t know if you know very well, Milan?
That’s where we’re staying right now.
You know Navigli?
We were just there last night in fact.
I spent a year and a half with a small, small, small company there. Navigli is a difficult, hard place to run a restaurant. The people that come, the tourists, all they want—even if you are in the middle of August—it’s Barolo and saffron risotto. After a year and a half, it was like, okay, this is not my place.
“Navigli is a difficult, hard place to run a restaurant. The people that come, the tourists, all they want—even if you are in the middle of August—it’s Barolo and saffron risotto. After a year and a half, it was like, okay, this is not my place.”
Next I managed the dinners for the Expo Milano in 2015. The James Beard Foundation in the US brought over all these famous chefs for a gala dinner. Michael Cimarusti, David Kinch, Daniel Humm. Later I went to stage with David Kinch at Manresa in Los Gatos. I was really attracted to his kitchen, where things are between French and Japanese.
Kinch is an interesting guy.
He is, and so is Michael Cimarusti. He feels Italian, more comfortably so to me, though I don’t know if he was born in Italy or it was just his grandparents. David is really different but is a great guy too. And so, finally in 2016, I opened Il Sereno.
What drew you here to this particular place?
It’s a small hotel where we serve the guests looking for gastronomic food, and the people who are just here to relax around Lake Como. Especially after we got the Michelin star, we get more of the kind of people who come here and understand what I do. Palazzo Sasso, Villa Feltrinelli, Villa del Quar—those places gave me the opportunity to understand both kinds of guests. It can be messy, but we figured it out.
There are a lot of newer fancy hotels and restaurants around Lake Como.
Yeah. Especially in the last two years, Como grew up very fast.
This is my first visit, but it seems like these expensive hotels opening more modern or contemporary restaurants is a recent thing.
I think Il Sereno was the first actually. Not saying we’re better or special. We are different. Just looking at the hotel, even the structure is very different from everything else around here.
So was that always the intention? I guess when they made the hotel, they wanted the restaurant to match the hotel, to be different from the traditional places around Como?
Some clients might want gastronomic food one night, maybe room service another night, or just simple food. But they have the option to try something different here.
What happened around Como during the pandemic?
I can talk about what happened to us. There was a lot of sacrifice. For one thing, we modified salaries, and didn’t lay off anyone. We did the same service, the same kitchen, the same way for everything with the same staff. I didn’t want to fire anyone, so we just managed salaries for a few seasons. Even for me. The sacrifices were on all sides.
So you kept the same staff? And were you able to reinstate their pay eventually?
We are now back to the normal salary. The hotel is full now—full more than expectation. We only had three months of open season in 2020, because we opened at the end of June. Last year, we opened in the beginning of the May. This year we opened in the middle of March, and we’ll close for the season in the middle of November. Then we open in St. Barth’s at the end of October, and we close there at the end of August.
Other than changing pay, are you still dealing with other effects from the pandemic?
When it comes to staff, we are still in the middle of crazy things. Even at Sereno we need three or four more people, and it’s not because we don’t want to pay for them. It’s because people are almost impossible to find. That’s the problem because many people in the middle of the pandemic, maybe they just drive for Amazon. Maybe they go work for Esselunga, which is a big, big, big supermarket in northern Italy.
“When it comes to staff, we are still in the middle of crazy things. Even at Sereno we need three or four more people, and it’s not because we don’t want to pay for them. It’s because people are almost impossible to find.”
If they can get about the same pay working eight hours a day there, versus fourteen hours a day in a restaurant? And if your ambition is not to become a big chef? Some people just changed everything, just left the industry.
You have this complicated dual-menu approach at your restaurant here. How do you go about training staff to handle it?
Because we are a seasonal hotel, in some ways it’s good because you get a break in November. But in other ways it’s hard because maybe you start with someone new near the end of the season. Normally you need to work with a chef at least a year and half, I think. In other places, you might do four months as garde manger, then four months in main course, and so on. Here, if you start in main course, you finish in main course.
Would you say it’s about evenly split between people who choose the special versus the traditional menus?
Most of the clientele do the traditional menu for sure, to be honest. But after they do the chef’s traditional menu, then they’re interested in this other menu—to try the chef’s main philosophy. And maybe the next time they don’t do just carbonara. It’s hard to manage two menus like this, but it’s very beautiful, too.
How long did it take you to get this restaurant to a place where you were satisfied with how it runs?
Three years.
You got the Michelin star after two years—so you got the star before you were really satisfied with the menus?
I think Michelin saw that we do quality. Not all people, not all chefs want to deal with all this headache with ratings. Some of my friends, even my best friend, he just says, “You know what? I already have too many things to think about. I don’t want to think about anything else, right?”
Are most of the staff in your kitchen Italian?
No. For this season, I have one Swedish, two Spanish, and one from Georgia. I want that—the combining of cultures. Maybe one of these guys gives me a new twist. Especially in Italy, we get used to working with all Italians. Most of my Italian staff doesn’t speak any other language. This is tough. When you manage French people speaking in French, it’s completely different. In St. Barth’s we are speaking French mostly, but we’re managing an Italian restaurant.
Now I manage all the restaurants, at all the hotels. In 2016 I just the managed the restaurant here at Como. After two years and the Michelin star, they said okay, we are strong, blah blah blah, you want to manage? Manage!
Do you think this is about as much responsibility as you can manage at one time? Or could you take on more?
For this season, for example, it’s very hard to do any more because we are completely stuffed. Maybe for the future, if we try to find a place for just a restaurant, maybe we can do something. What we do now is almost too much, but we do it with a smile.
Are you thinking yet about how you could train or prepare someone to run the restaurant for you, so you could work on other things?
My dream is two Michelin stars, but two Michelin stars is not something you can “manage.” It’s completely impossible. Delicious food, you can manage. But my dream is my dream, and to try and get two Michelin stars, I need more time to just think about the restaurant. As it is, I need to think about the clients. To do both alone, it’s impossible. But you can manage if you get a good coworker to help you. Somehow you have to get coworkers who can help manage every situation in hospitality, without just adding more and more staff.
“My dream is two Michelin stars, but two Michelin stars is not something you can ‘manage.’ It’s completely impossible.”
So I think for the next two years, we just to step up and build. And the company is still opening new things even though we’re short on staff.
It seems like kitchens have gotten smaller all over the world.
We are all doing too much with less people, everywhere.
From a chef’s perspective, how do you approach the difference between one or two Michelin stars? What do you have to do differently to level up?
We can’t forget that the people doing these ratings are not machines. These are people. What are they feeling, what are they thinking? And when one comes in to rate the restaurant, that’s just one of these people. That person could be all bubbly, all talking nice about the restaurant. But there could be four more people doing the ratings to get two Michelin stars, and they all have to be the same.
They have to agree?
You have to get the same score.
Leaving that aside though, what do you feel you need to do, or change, in order to have a shot at a second star?
I need more space, because my kitchen is so small. And we only have one dining room.
That’s something you have to get the owners to go along with, I imagine.
Yes, if what we want to do is get two Michelin stars at this property. We talk all the time about this kind of thing. If you go for a gastronomic restaurant at this high level, you have to understand the balance of investment.
That seems like a relatively easy answer though—just more space. Is there anything else to getting another star, from your perspective?
More space is part of the answer between one and two stars. There are different parts of each step. For example, I think the difference between two and three Michelin stars is service. Like for that, your timing has to be just so perfect. One star, you have achieved something with your food. But the main thing between one and two stars, I think, is the idea of the chef. It doesn’t matter what you cook—contemporary, classic, whatever. But if the chef has an idea, with something special, some kind of twist ... it’s like umami. Maybe you’re just making pesto, but it has that umami, because the chef is special.
It wasn’t so long ago that Michelin had a very clear preference for French cuisine, and Europe generally. And it was only a few years back that they started rating other kinds of restaurants, in other places like the United States. Do you think they’ve gotten more inclusive in that way?
Well, to understand another thing about their ratings, to explain the bigger picture … this Italian chef—Mario Uliassi—had three Michelin stars in Senigallia in central Italy recently. He said, “If I have to compare my three Michelin stars to three Michelin stars in France ...” well, they’re just completely different movies. It’s like comparing Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott. All the countries deserve different opinions. I think Michelin understands that all the countries and all the cities are different. Even the north of Italy is different from the south of Italy in that way.
The ratings are a crazy thing in many ways, but we accept that they give us this judgement and we receive it in silence. If you don’t want to deal with that, you just say so and move on. But if you accept that Michelin ratings are just an opinion, you just say, okay, this is my job. If they say one, two, three, whatever stars, I will be here. For me, I put my head on the pillow and I sleep through the night.
You sleep well regardless of ratings?
Yeah, I do. My body, my son, my wife make certain of that.
Disclosure: My wife and I ate lunch at Il Sereno’s restaurant after this interview, and the meal was comped. You can read some thoughts about that practice here.