Alain Allegretti

Chef-owner, La Promenade des Anglais
New York, New York

When, at the ripe young age of seventeen, Alain Allegretti

decided to become a chef, he had a slew of options. Having grown

up in Nice with an Italian father and an Italian grandmother, he

certainly could have embraced those Italian roots and gone to work

in Rome. His grandmother had taught him how to make her

signature cavatelli—a dense noodle made with ricotta cheese—but

then again, being in Nice, she also taught him how to make pot-au-

feu and clafoutis, undoubtedly French dishes.

To complicate things, Allegretti’s mother is Vietnamese. She

would make her signature bam bou, a dish with angel hair, crispy

beef, cucumber, soja, and peanuts that the young Alain loved. But

Allegretti, the burgeoning chef, didn’t tap into his Asian roots

either.

Instead, he forged his own path, fusing all of these influences

into a cuisine of his own. As we cooked together in the kitchen of

his former restaurant, Allegretti, the dishes he cooked—cavatelli

with spring vegetables, seared fish with fennel salad, and a

chocolate cherry clafoutis—feature his own idiosyncratic

approach to food and cooking while celebrating the influence of his

mentors.