Borgo La Chiaracia, a five-star resort in Castel Giorgio, Umbria, has appointed 25-year-old chef Gabriel Collazzo to lead its Radici fine dining restaurant starting October 2025. Collazzo, trained in France and Italy, plans menus that highlight local ingredients with international influences. The resort emphasizes Umbrian products in its hospitality and cuisine.
Nestled on the Alfina plateau near the Lazio border and Lake Bolsena, Borgo La Chiaracia connects three farmhouses via an underground tunnel to preserve the landscape. The resort promotes local farms and artisans through its offerings, including a welcome gift of dried chickpeas from the La Chiaracia farm and its Metodo Classico sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir grapes. Breakfast features items like cow's milk ricotta, yogurt, jams, honey, and eggs from the ethical Pulicaro farm, which also supplies poultry. Additional dining options include the La Pagoda bistro and Etrusco Bar.
Gabriel Collazzo, born in 1999, brings experience from France, where he trained at his brother's restaurant before age 18, and under three-Michelin-macaron chef Eric Pras at Maison Lameloise in Chagny. He debuted in haute cuisine at Florence's two-Michelin-starred Santa Elisabetta. As he recalls, “After tasting executive chef Rocco De Santis' spaghetti with seaweed butter and bottarga, I left my resume and two weeks later I was in the kitchen with him.” At Radici, Collazzo has developed three tasting menus that connect to the Umbrian territory, with vegetables playing a key role, as in the €80 Radici menu.
He envisions future enhancements: “For the next menu, I would like to bring even more of ‘myself’ who has worked abroad and place greater emphasis on white meats such as rabbit, to get closer to the local area. Nearby, we have a fantastic organic pasture farm for a protein that is often underestimated in fine dining establishments.” Collazzo is discussing starting an on-site farm for daily garden-based dishes. The restaurant is overseen by maître d'hôtel and sommelier Mauro Clementi, with a cellar featuring Italian, French, and Umbrian wines, including Orvieto DOC verticals.
A tasting of the €125 Condividere menu, seven courses, showcases his approach. Highlights include a babà with tomato sauce, burrata, and basil pesto; crispy oyster with Mangalitza lard and spinach cream; veal sweetbread with turnip greens, pine nuts, and black truffle; pumpkin gnocchi with goat's milk toma cheese and black cabbage; and spaghetti sotto le nuvole with wild fennel butter, pike, lavarello bottarga, yuzu air, plankton, and bergamot essence. The roe deer Bourguignonne pairs potato millefeuille with black truffle, while pigeon matured in beeswax for 60 days features umeboshi, black garlic, and bay leaf extract. As Collazzo explains, “This recipe is the result of my eight years spent in France, where pigeon is one of the symbols of the country's gastronomic identity. I preserve it in beeswax for 60 days to break down the fiber and make it more tender, a process that also allows me to cook it more pink.” Dessert is cocoa ravioli with gianduia, hazelnut, cocoa wafer, and white truffle.
Collazzo aims to elevate Radici: “I want to raise the standard of the Radici restaurant, understand customers' desires, and enhance their experiences here at Borgo La Chiaracia.”