A native of Bergamo, Italy, Chef Gadaldi began working at an early age in his family’s business, "Gadaldi Gastronomia", where they produced and cured their own prosciutto and salumi. Aware that the restaurant industry was in his blood, Gadaldi enrolled in Italy’s well-known professional hotel school, San Pellegrino. There, he refined his skills and was introduced to the fine art of Italian cooking.

Signature dishes include:

Antipasti
Tortino – melting Gorgonzola cheese trapped in a parsley-potato pancake
Crostini – Tuscan style chicken pâte atop toasted country bread

Pasta
Spaghetti di Farro – spelt wheat spaghetti with bolognese meat sauce
Gnocchi – potato dumplings with tomato sauce, arugula and pecorino

Main Courses
Milanese – breaded veal scaloppini with asparagus and caper aioli
Tagliata – thin slices of beef with arugula and balsamic vinaigrette

Desserts
Coppa Antica – layers of pastry cream with meringue and fresh raspberries
Panna cotta – vanilla cream custard with huckleberries in zinfandel


Chef-Owner Ruggero Gadaldi - Biography

Ruggero Gadaldi’s passion is to cook simply prepared authentic Italian food, utilizing the freshest ingredients available. He believes in traditions, the Slow Food movement, his mother’s tiramisu and fine wines. And, one of his greatest honors was cooking for Pope John Paul II.

Born and raised in a small town just north of Bergamo, Italy, Gadaldi was immediately captivated by gastronomy. As a young seven-year-old boy he began working in his family’s business, Gadaldis Gastronomia, a town favorite to the population of 840 people. The family store produced and cured their own prosciutto, salami and other meats. Equipped with a paper chef hat and an innate fervor for food, Gadaldi worked hard at the store learning curing techniques and the trade. A boy with an enthusiasm to learn, he spent time with a family friend and shepherd, milking cows and making cream and butter -- the fresh dairy products carried at the family Gastronomia. Ultimately his growing hunger for cooking drove him to enroll in Italy’s well-renowned professional hotel school, San Pellegrino, at age 14. There he refined his skills and was introduced to the fine art of Italian cooking.

This early start blossomed into a lauded career that has taken Gadaldi through several of Europe’s finest hotels and resorts, across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City and Los Angeles, ending in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Gadaldi now oversees his own restaurant creations, Antica Trattoria, Pesce, Beretta and Delarosa.

Classical training at such first class establishments as the Hotel Pitrizza in Porto Cervo, Italy, and the Palace Hotel in Gstaad, Switzerland, cultivated Gadaldi’s flair for elegance and imagination in his food preparations. However, it was his desire to expand his culinary techniques and repertoire that prompted Gadaldi to move to the United States. It was at San Francisco’s celebrated restaurant Etrusca where Gadaldi generated major attention among the public and press for his modern-day translations of classic Etruscan cuisine.

Today, Gadaldi continues to bring his honest sensibility, strong love and knowledge for Italian cuisine and culture to all of his restaurants. Renowned throughout the Bay Area for outstanding regional Italian fare – all top 100 restaurants each year and more – Gadaldi’s philosophy is to create fresh interpretations that are true to his origin and excite and stimulate the palate.

Among his many accolades…

2008	Selected as a San Francisco Chronicle Visionary Chef
2006 & 2008	Selected chef delegate, Slow Food, Terra Madre Conference
2004	Selected participant in James Beard Award Dinner honoring Piero Selvaggio
2001	Awarded the Diploma di Buona Cucina from the Accademia Italiana Della Cucina
1996-2006	Best Neighborhood Italian, Bay Area Critics’ Choice Awards - San Francisco Chronicle
1992-1995	Selected participant for Food and Wine Society Dinner, San Francisco
1992-1993	Critics’ Choice Award - San Francisco Focus Magazine
1992	Selected participant for International Italian Food Event, New York City
1991-1992	Selected participant for Macy’s California Chef Tour, San Francisco
1987	Selected chef for Papal visit, Los Angeles

Ruggero lives in San Francisco with his wife Judith and their two sons Giovanni and Alessandro.