Principe Forte dei Marmi

Valentino Cassanelli

Hospitality Team Advocate

Valentino Cassanelli brings experience shaped by international hospitality, culinary exploration and restaurant management. His approach combines Italian culinary roots with global influences, team development and a focus on creating distinctive guest experiences.

Experience Shaping the Kitchen

All the experiences and challenges I have faced in my career and life continue to shape the cultural, professional and human experience I carry today. Professional growth matters, but so does the person behind the professional. Together, they allow me to create personal and original restaurant concepts.

Leading a kitchen also requires the ability to listen, anticipate and sense change while managing and collaborating with dynamic, organized and enthusiastic teams. Traveling, working and living abroad gave me the opportunity to learn from different organizational models that I later embraced.

Interacting with chefs and hospitality professionals from around the world became an important part of my growth. I was fortunate to work in restaurants I had dreamed of entering, where I learned from and built lasting relationships with people I admired. Those experiences helped shape the way I manage my kitchen and restaurant today.

My cuisine is a free expression of Italian cuisine. It begins and ends with Italian roots, but the ingredients travel, becoming enriched by distant aromas, techniques and cultures before returning to their Mediterranean identity.

Building Hospitality through Teamwork

Teamwork is everything. You cannot create a restaurant or deliver hospitality alone. Sharing my thoughts and experience while inspiring the men and women who work alongside me every day is the foundation of a strong and motivated team.

Empowering people, setting goals and demonstrating the mission create opportunities for both the company and the individuals within it. A hospitality team includes every part of the operation, from the dining room, kitchen, bar and reception to the back office, reservations and housekeeping. It also includes the suppliers and producers who connect us to an incredible region that we have a responsibility to represent at its best.

Listening is crucial as guest expectations continue to evolve. Guests are increasingly aware, demanding and accustomed to the best, so using personality to make their moments unique, joyful and fulfilling requires constant attention.

Listening, studying, researching and, above all, developing personal sensitivity are essential to transforming ingredients into unforgettable taste experiences.

Creating Meaning through Hospitality

Hospitality is a demanding profession that requires sacrifice and hard work, but it also offers a tremendous and all-encompassing sense of self. It becomes a way of life.

Young chefs must choose their own path, build professional and personal experience and remain receptive to what every situation can teach them. Behind every experience, whether good or bad, there is a lesson that can remain with us.

Self-respect and respect for the brigade are essential, but so is understanding when and how to challenge established rules in order to offer guests the beauty of hospitality.

Hospitality and catering are ultimately about transforming a dish, a cocktail, a gesture or a piece of advice into a dream, creating a special, comforting and human moment for the guest.

That dream must also become an economic generator that creates value for those who work in the industry, those who invest in it and the community itself. The goal is to do that in a sustainable, sincere and emotional way.