For Alberto Gipponi, a restaurant is not simply a place to serve food, but a space to question, explore, and connect. At Dina, his intimate sixteen-seat restaurant near Brescia, every detail is designed to challenge expectations, turning dining into an experience shaped as much by perception and emotion as by flavour.
Blending scientific research with instinct and storytelling, Gipponi continually redefines the boundaries of contemporary cuisine. His work invites guests to look beyond the plate, where technique becomes a tool for curiosity and hospitality is built on conversation, trust, and shared discovery.
The Best Chef: Alberto, how would you describe Dina in one sentence?
Alberto Gipponi: Dina is a place of total welcome. For me, hospitality is not simply receiving people. It is creating an environment where guests feel involved, where they are not spectators but participants. I think that kind of welcome is very rare today.
The Best Chef: The restaurant is intentionally very small. Why was reducing the number of seats so important?
Alberto Gipponi: In the beginning, we had more than thirty covers and eleven tables.
Over time I realised that I no longer liked the idea that people could come to Dina, eat, and leave without us truly getting to know them. So we gradually reduced the size of the restaurant until we arrived at sixteen covers.
Now every table matters. I care about who is sitting there, what they are experiencing, and what kind of energy they bring into the room.
The Best Chef: You also created a fourth table for returning guests, the “dynamici.” What is the idea behind it?
Alberto Gipponi: The dynamici are guests who come back repeatedly to eat the same dishes, discuss them, and help us understand how the menu evolves.
They are not customers in the traditional sense. They become part of the creative process. We test ideas with them, we talk about what works and what does not, and sometimes we even explore other restaurants together.
The next menu will actually be called Dynamici, because it is the result of that dialogue.
The Best Chef: One of the most striking dishes is the boiled puff pastry with frozen caviar. How did that idea develop?
Alberto Gipponi: It came from a long series of failures. The very first test worked perfectly. Then the next hundred cracked inside the pot. I had to study temperature, butter structure, dough structure, and even the environmental conditions of the kitchen.
Now the dough rests overnight at minus seven degrees before I encase the butter. Everything must have exactly the same structure; otherwise the butter escapes.
For me, technique is often the art of understanding why something fails.
The Best Chef: You seem fascinated by the structure of pasta.
Alberto Gipponi: Absolutely. In one dish we thermally process the flour at 105°C so that the gliadin and glutenin proteins unfold. When cold water and cold flour are combined, an exothermic reaction occurs and the dough becomes warm and extremely elastic.
That allowed us to create what we call rock pasta: a tighter, more resistant structure that changes the bite completely. I am interested in pasta not only as tradition, but as material.
The Best Chef: Despite all this research, there is also humour in the meal—Bread & Nutella, licking the plate, guessing ingredients.
Alberto Gipponi: Food should not become solemn. I take the work seriously, but I do not want the guest to feel intimidated.
Curiosity, surprise, and play are essential.
If people smile, ask questions, or even argue about a dish, that means the meal is alive.
The Best Chef: What is the biggest responsibility of a chef today?
Alberto Gipponi: To create meaningful experiences. Not necessarily spectacular ones. Meaningful ones. A guest should leave with a memory, a question, a new perception, or a different way of thinking about food. Otherwise we are only producing consumption.
The Best Chef: Define “The Best Chef” in one word.
Alberto Gipponi: Curiosity. Because curiosity generates research, research generates understanding, and understanding allows us to cook with intention rather than habit.
Chef Instagram: @albertogipponi
Restaurant Instagram: @dina_ristorante
Restaurant Address: Via Santa Croce, 1, 25064 Gussago BS
