Umami

The story

Umami Badalucco: Modern Cuisine by Chef Matteo D'Elia in Liguria

The Fifth Taste in Badalucco

In the Argentine Valley of Liguria, Umami is a restaurant built around a single, precise idea: the perfect balance of the fifth taste. Chef Matteo D’Elia, born in nearby Sanremo, began cooking at sixteen. After training in Paris and a formative stint in England alongside Giorgio Locatelli—where he learned the primacy of raw ingredients—he continued refining his craft with chefs including Takuma Kobayashi and Taiji Maruyama. It was with Maruyama that D’Elia became a shoulder in the kitchen, learning the depth behind every element on a plate.

At Umami, the team seeks to find and enhance ingredients that naturally contain umami—the savory synthesis of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Through conservation techniques, fermentations, cooking, marinades, and pairings, they aim for a maximum expression of that taste. The approach has earned the restaurant a Michelin Recommended award, a recognition that speaks to the precision of the cooking.

Menus Rooted in Place

The restaurant offers three set menus: Orto Feeling (five vegan courses), Fish Lover (five fish courses), and Umami (five meat courses). But the most personal expression is the Omakase menu, which is constantly evolving. D’Elia lets the garden, the fishing boats of the Ligurian coast, local cattle farms, and the seasons dictate the path. The goal is to offer ingredients at the peak of their flavour, produced and consumed locally wherever possible.

The Omakase experience is described as one of trust: there is no fixed order or strategy, but nothing is by chance. Each dish has a story, and the journey travels from the Argentina valley and the Ligurian sea outward, even via the American subcontinent. It is a modern cuisine that respects its sources without being bound by them.