Manuel Cid Esposito. Private chef, worldwide

The service

One table. Yours.

I cook where you are. A villa above the sea. A boat at anchor. An estate in the hills. Any coast, any country.

The menu does not exist yet. It takes shape in a conversation with you, and in what the place gives that morning.

One dinner, one crew, one table. Nothing pre-packaged. I travel; the method comes with me.

Curated means the table is only the visible part. Sourcing, crew, timing, wine, the quiet around the room. You choose the place and the guests. The rest is my work.

From eight guests to two hundred and fifty in the courtyard of a castle. The scale changes. The standard does not.

Estate and retreat

Days, not hours. Open fire, long tables, a pantry built on site.

A villa, arches and beams, set for a private dinner

Villa dinner

A kitchen I have never seen becomes mine for a day. The table is set where the house is at its best.

Yacht and boat

A small galley, a full menu. The sea sets the rhythm, the catch sets the menu.

Destination event

Anywhere with a kitchen, or space to build one. I arrive early, source locally.

How it works

01
You write. Dates, place, guests.
02
We talk. The menu takes shape around you, the season, the catch.
03
I arrive with the raw material. I cook. You sit.

No fixed menus, no printed lists. Every event is built once.

A finished plate, held up against the sea

Experiences

Where I have cooked.

Holding a pan of paella under the pergola — Lunch is ready

Carrying a whole bluefin tuna through the alley — The whole fish

A live lobster held up in the kitchen — Alive, minutes before

Curry paste being pounded in a stone mortar — Pounded, not blended

A finished plate held against the hills — Where it is eaten

A long table under a cane pergola, hills behind — Under the pergola

The hook, still there

A loin of tuna held in a tattooed hand — By hand

Raw, then fire

A tray of raw seafood: scampi, prawns, oyster, seaweed — Raw, from the sea

The cut

From the woods to the plate

Wild garlic, picked

Raw fish served in terracotta, Chiang Mai — Terracotta, Chiang Mai

Larb served in a lettuce cup — Larb, in a leaf

Goats, against the light

Wild herbs laid out and labeled by hand — Named, one by one

Edible flowers on a striped cloth — What the garden gives

A basket of cherries held in a tattooed hand — Picked that morning

The terraces

Wisteria, fermenting

Over coals

Lobster, gratinated

Salt crust, opened

An outdoor table with anchovies, bread and mimosa — The table set

Evening, on the terrace

The spread

A Thai teaching kitchen, shelves of labeled jars — The Thai pantry

Chalk diagrams of a Siamese recipe on slate — The lesson, in chalk

Two whole fish on a steel tray — Whole, always

The island of Bergeggi seen from the shore — The island

A plate over sun struck stone — Stone, sun, a plate

The raw material

It starts with what is alive.

Fish arrives whole, by the day's catch. I work all of it: the raw cuts, the belly, the fire. What remains goes to the lab. Garum, confit lemon, ferments.

Wild herbs, sprouts, vegetables in season. The pantry is wherever the table is: the coast, the market, the garden of the house.

The lab is where nothing is lost. Bones become broth. Trimmings become garum. Peels are candied or fermented. On this coast food was never abundant, so nothing was thrown away. I cook inside that logic.

Winters, I close and go. One kitchen, one place, one thing studied deeply. Thailand gave me fermentation and patience. Each place left a technique in my hands.

What I carry everywhere is a library of old flavors. Tastes that are getting hard to find anywhere. It is the most valuable thing I own.

The morning's harvest laid out on canvas

Manuel holding a whole bluefin tuna in the alley

Si parte da ciò che è vivo.

Roots

The flour has a field.

Ancient grains, grown in permaculture by my father. Alta Langa, between Somano and Dogliani. Nothing that forces the land. Harvest when it is ready.

My father works those fields without forcing anything. Old varieties, sown thin, cut when they are ready. The land is not asked to produce more than it can.

I grew up inside that rhythm, between the Langa hills and this coast. It left me one rule: the ingredient decides. The flour from those harvests becomes the bread and the pasta on your table.

The roots do not move. The method does.

A bed of lettuces from above, boots at the edge

Mare e collina nello stesso piatto, senza distanza.

The path

How I got here.

Alba, the LangheArt school, and my father's music venue in the hills: concerts in a village of a few hundred people. I looked before I cooked.
EighteenFirst seasons in my mother's restaurant kitchen.
NineteenAustralia. A caravan park kitchen in Broome, then the Gold Coast: every station, one after another.
The Covid yearsStopped in Thailand, stayed a year and a half. Most of it on Koh Kut, an island of fishermen.
Ibiza, first timeA kitchen inside the old walls of Dalt Vila.
A winter awayNine months through Mexico, then Costa Rica. Markets, kitchens, other ways of cooking.
Ibiza, againA restaurant with its own garden. Private events there and in Palma de Mallorca.
HomeBack on the Riviera di Ponente: the family restaurant, the kitchen, the direction.
PollenzoFood Innovation Management, University of Gastronomic Sciences.
2025Chiang Mai, twice. Old Siamese cooking beside Hanuman Aspler.
TodayBased on the Riviera di Ponente, and I travel to cook. Whole fish, permaculture, fermentation.

None of this was a plan. Each place was a season of work. Each kitchen, one lesson kept.

Put together, they are not a resume. They are a way of standing in front of an ingredient: art school first, then the fire.

La miglior comunicazione è fare le cose bene.

The orbit

One method, several builds.

Cooking is the origin, not the boundary. The same hand moves across brands, websites and territory. These are the projects that orbit around it.

Active

Studio del Golfo

Web and communication studio for the small businesses of the Gulf of the Island. A design system born from the territory, 170 plus businesses mapped. Live at studiodelgolfo.it.

Season 2026

Lei è Peggio di Me

Research cuisine in a Spotorno alley. Raw or fire, nothing in between. My side of it: the kitchen, the creative direction, the brand and the narrative website.

Returns 2027

FUGÀ

A Mediterranean concept store designed end to end: brand, interiors, products, rituals. Built on paper, shelved on purpose, waiting for its season.

Ongoing

Regenerative territory

Permaculture, slow tourism, the Gulf as a destination. Groundwork with the local community, workshops, and a coast that deserves better stories.

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ManuelCid Esposito