At Nove, the restaurant of Villa della Pergola in Alassio, the first impression does not come only from the plate. It comes also from the place. A historic villa above the Ligurian coast, gardens that seem to hold the memory of several seasons and places at once, the sea in the distance, and a dining room where the experience is meant to feel less like a demonstrative performance than an invitation.
The restaurant has a Michelin star, but its strength lies elsewhere. Not in the codes of formality, nor in the desire to impress, but in a quieter ambition: to make each guest feel received, understood and carried through the meal.
At the centre of this balance are Antonio Romano, Executive Chef, and Francesca Ricci, Restaurant Manager. He leads the kitchen with precision, restraint and a deep concern for the final taste. She gives the dining room its rhythm, its warmth and its ability to adapt to each guest. Together, they are shaping Nove as a restaurant built around people before anything else.
For Francesca Ricci, the starting point is clear. Villa della Pergola is not a neutral setting. It is a house. That word matters because it changes everything: the tone of the welcome, the pace of the service, the relationship with the table, the way a guest is allowed to settle into the evening.
“Everything must feel as though you are in a house,” she says.
It is a simple sentence, but it explains much of the service at Nove. The room should not feel stiff. It should not place the guest at a distance. The aim is not to show that everything has been mastered, even if it has. The aim is to create a form of ease, a quiet confidence that allows the meal to unfold naturally.
For Francesca Ricci, hospitality begins with observation. A guest does not arrive as an abstract figure in a reservation book. They arrive with a mood, a story, a level of fatigue, curiosity or expectation. Some come to celebrate. Others come to discover. Some need attention. Others need space. The dining room must be able to understand the difference.
“We want to make the guest part of the experience,” she explains. “They should not feel passive.”
That idea is essential. At Nove, service is not designed as a choreography performed around the guest. It is a conversation, sometimes spoken, sometimes silent. The team must know when to explain, when to step back, when to accelerate and when to let time stretch.
The same attention exists in the kitchen, but through another language. Antonio Romano speaks less about concepts than about sensations. For him, a dish must first be tasted before it is interpreted. It may require hours of work, several preparations, reductions, sauces, textures and adjustments, but none of that should weigh on the guest.
“The most important thing for me is the final sensation,” he says. “The guest should enjoy the dish without having to overthink it.”
His cooking is not simple, but it avoids complication for its own sake. The structure of a plate matters. The sauce matters. The acidity, the seasoning, the temperature, the rhythm of the bite all matter. Yet the result must feel natural.
This is particularly visible in the way he thinks about pasta. A filled pasta cannot be approximate. The dough must be fine but resistant. The filling must hold without becoming heavy. The sauce must support the dish, not cover it. The whole must arrive as one gesture.
For Antonio Romano, this is part of the Italian discipline of taste. Not a nostalgic idea of tradition, but a sense of proportion. A dish can be contemporary without losing clarity. It can carry memory without becoming fixed in the past.
He is careful, however, not to build a cuisine that speaks only to a small circle of initiated guests. He does not want the table to become a test. He is interested in complexity, but only when it leads to pleasure.
“I do not want to divide people,” he says. “I want the food to be good for everybody.”
This does not mean removing character from the food. It means knowing how far to go. Bitterness can be present, but not dominant. Acidity can structure a dish, but not erase it. A sauce can bring depth, but it must never hide the product. The ambition is not to soften everything. It is to find the right point of balance.
That balance also defines the relationship to the territory. Nove benefits from an exceptional environment. The gardens of Villa della Pergola provide herbs, flowers, citrus fruit and vegetables. Liguria offers the sea, the hills, olive oil, aromatic plants and a culinary memory shaped by movement between land and coast.
Yet Antonio Romano refuses to turn locality into a speech.
“We use many products from our garden,” he says. “But we do not need to talk about it all the time. You understand it when you taste it.”
This restraint says a lot about his approach. The product should not arrive at the table already burdened with explanation. The guest should feel the place through flavour: the perfume of an herb, the freshness of a vegetable, the bitterness of citrus, the clean expression of a fish.
The territory is present, but never forced. It is not a slogan. It is a background, a source, a grammar. The cuisine remains Italian, but open. Ligurian, but not enclosed. Contemporary, but still connected to the gestures that make Italian cooking immediately recognisable.
For Antonio Romano, this maturity also comes from time. He speaks about it with honesty. Earlier in his career, he wanted to move quickly. He wanted to push, to reach the next step, to prove himself. Like many young chefs, he measured progress by acceleration.
Today, the idea has changed.
“Everyone has their own time,” he says. “When I was younger, I always wanted to push. Now I understand that you should not compare yourself with others, but with yourself.”
This shift has changed the way he leads. A kitchen is not built by forcing every cook into the same mould. It requires rhythm, patience and trust. Some people need structure. Others need confidence. Some learn quickly. Others reveal themselves more slowly. The chef’s role is not only to demand, but to understand how to make people grow.
“You need consistency. You need humility, focus and time,” he says. “Then you can build something.”
That sentence could describe a kitchen, a team or a restaurant. It also explains the connection between Antonio Romano and Francesca Ricci. Both understand that Nove is not built in one service, one dish or one season. It is built through repetition, attention and the ability to remain aligned even when the restaurant is full, the pressure rises and every table expects something slightly different.
Their collaboration works because their roles are distinct. Antonio Romano gives the restaurant its culinary direction. Francesca Ricci gives it emotional intelligence. He works on depth, texture and taste. She works on timing, atmosphere and the guest’s perception of the evening along with their team.
Neither speaks about luxury as excess. Their idea of luxury is more discreet. A guest who feels seen. A dish that is generous without being heavy. A service that adapts without becoming intrusive. A territory that appears through taste rather than explanation.
At Nove, the experience is not designed to distance the guest from the restaurant. It is designed to bring them closer.
That may be the true identity of the house. Not a restaurant that asks to be admired from afar, but one that wants to be lived from within. A place where the cuisine, the service, the gardens and the villa come together in the same direction.
With Antonio Romano in the kitchen and Francesca Ricci in the dining room, Nove is not trying to become louder, more spectacular or more demonstrative. It is doing something more difficult: making fine dining feel personal.
And in a world where so many restaurants compete to impress, that may be the most lasting form of elegance.
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