La Cucina di Donna Carmela

"Cooking is love and passion". Chef Piergiorgio Alecci was born in Catania, the capital city on the slopes of the volcano Etna, where he attended the hotel institute obtaining his high school graduation.

He starts learning the culinary art from the masters, he travels around Italy and Europe to discover new flavors, expanding his professional and cultural background. Despite his young age, he counts important collaborations: with chef Andreas Zangler, at the Therasia Resort in Vulcano with chef Crescenzo Scotti in the year he won the Michelin star, in London at the one Michelin star restaurant Aspleys with chef Heinz Beck, with chef Emanuele Mazzella, and finally with chef Roberto Toro at the Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo in Taormina.

In 2018 his path takes him to DonnaCarmela Resort & Lodges (Riposto - CT) of the Faro family, renowned nurserymen who have been exporting plants all over the world for over 50 years and today with DonnaCarmela a reference point of excellence for Sicilian hospitality. The Resort, located inside a nursery that covers 10,000 square meters, it allows chef Piergiorgio to experiment with a zero-kilometer cuisine, picking directly from the garden and orchard, vegetables, herbs, and fruit, even exotic, which today are the basis of his most relevant dishes. The collaboration with DonnaCarmela is full of satisfaction for the Chef and his team, bringing the restaurant La Cucina di DonnaCarmela to be mentioned in the Michelin Guide. His cuisine has been appreciated not only by the guests, who over the years have been enjoying the refined dishes of the restaurant, but also by the multi-starred chefs Bruno Barbieri and Massimo Bottura who have been positively impressed.

Defined as a reflexive and discreet chef, he pursues in his cuisine a harmony between the simplicity and freshness of the raw materials and the aromas they release. The combinations are balanced in avoiding that they overlap each other, by exalting the products in their natural qualities and producing them with new and modern cooking techniques.