Ivan Beacco

Ivan Beacco, Executive Chef at Acqua restaurant, was raised in the coastal northern Italian city of Trieste, a stone throw of distance from Venice. He was exposed to a style of cooking that fused classic Italian fares with “Mittel European” traditions. From early on, Beacco knew he enjoyed creating food to please his friends and family. After the mandatory school education in Italy, when he was 14, he decided to take a much different path from his peers: he enrolled in a professional cooking school in a city far from his own. After two years of basic culinary education he decided that the best way to learn the craft was behind the stove and he started working seasonally on the Adriatic Riviera during the summer and in the mountain retreats of Dolomiti in winter. After 4 years of working in classic Italian restaurants and hotels in Italy he decided to start exploring new venues and went on to work first in Vienna in a small restaurant close to the famous Naschmarkt market where he started enjoying working with small local purveyors of fresh food, thereby supporting the micro economy, and being introduced to the organic cuisine at the same time. He will be faithful to this habit later on, while working in New York City and getting the best ingredients from the local Green Market in Union Square. On his culinary journey, Beacco moved on to work in a small town near Bruxelles where the French influence added up to his ever growing passion for cosmopolitan cuisine. When he was 22 years old his desire of expanding his culinary horizons brought him to the mecca of restaurant world: New York City where he started working the starters station at Borgo Antico Restaurant, a Tuscan Emilian inspired restaurant near the vibrant Union Square. After a couple of years his craving for different approaches on the Italian ideas brought him to work with chef Maurizio Marfoglia at Revel, a modern Italian joint in the Upper West Side and later on at Marfoglia’s new concept restaurant Carmaya in the hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the fusion between Asian, Italian and French cuisine helped Beacco expand his culinary background. After much experimenting and wandering in different direction from Hell’s Kitchen Locanda dei Vini, where for the first time he obtained the coveted position of Executive Chef, to Tribeca’s Tuscan staple Pepolino; he was also working freelance for the Italian Ambassador to the UN Paolo Vento organizing his private gatherings for heads of