Simone Cantafio two Michelin star chef of the Michel Bras Toya Japon restaurant on the eleventh floor of the Windsor hotel, on the island of Hokkaido, best in the world for Opinionated About Dining Classical & Heritage 2016, doubles. At the end of 2021
Simone Cantafio, together with the Bras family, is planning the opening of a new restaurant in Japan, in Karuizawa, in the heart of the country, a project that also sees the architectural signature of master Kengo Kuma.
Born in Calabria in 1986, Cantafio was born in Rho. After the Carlo Porta hotel school in Milan, at the age of just 17, he began to work in the most prestigious kitchens of the Italian panorama of the period, under the master Marchesi, in whose brigade he served for Carlo Cracco for three years. Until arriving in France, at the court of the three-starred Georges Blanc, and finally in 2015 at that of Michel Bras, becoming executive chef and director at Toya.
While waiting for the new Cantafio adventure, he took a rest period to spend with his family, with his parents, in Calabria, where he was then blocked by the effects of the coronavirus.
But that didn't stop him from planning a four-handed dinner with Antonio Biafora at Hyle, the brand new gourmet restaurant in Torre Garga in San Giovanni in Fiore that Biafora has conceived as a fine dining venue closely linked to the Sila and the entire territory of Calabria. A cuisine proposal that is based on the historical knowledge and culture of the place, where raw materials and products from small local farmers meet, haute cuisine and attention to detail, together with a 'convivial' service proposal, which interacts with the kitchen and room, creating a unique gastronomic experience capable of involving the guest in all phases of the tasting.
The appointment with the two great Calabrian chefs is for Wednesday 9 September for a dinner in the name of nature, the absolute protagonist of Cantafio's cuisine (“herbs, flowers but also everything that is vegetable animates our menu all the year") and of tradition seen through the eyes of modernity.
Antonio Biafora and Simone Cantafio explain the idea of this collaboration as follows: "in a delicate period like the one the world is experiencing, knowing how to adapt and
staying on the move is the secret ingredient to be able to continue to make our passions live. Thus this beautiful initiative was born, in friendship, in front of a fireplace and with a great desire to look forward with a positive and growth spirit".
