One of Italy’s best young chefs opens a restaurant in Orvieto

After years of pop-ups and travelling events, Arso by Tommaso Tonioni has finally secured a fixed location. When we first met him, Tonioni already had an impressively long list of experiences that alone seemed enough to mark him as one of the young chefs worth investing in. It was the eve of 2020, and he was stepping into the kitchens of Achilli al Parlamento (now home to Pierluigi Gallo), bringing a dramatic shift from the previous leadership of Massimo Viglietti. His tenure was brief but enough to make us sit up in surprise, disorient Michelin, and attract the attention of many who recognised in him talent, technique, personality, and a coherent, rigorous vision. His fine dining style could not be more contemporary, with a tight bond between high cuisine and raw, earthy authenticity.

He is one of the Genovese boys (like many of today’s most exciting talents) and boasts a background that includes time with Gabriele Bonci (to deepen his understanding of baking and forge a strong connection with agricultural ingredients, which play a key role in his journey), Roy Caceres, Valeria Piccini, Victor Arguinzoniz (the legendary parrillero of Etxebarri), Pierre Gagnaire, and Kobe Desramaults (back when he ran Chambre Séparée). Like the Belgian chef, Tonioni is meticulous and has little patience for the rigid structures and suffocating pace of fine dining. He realised that the traditional restaurant life was not for him and began to develop his own vision of hospitality—one that blends experiences, principles, and his personal philosophy of both cooking and living.

Arso: from pop-up to itinerant kitchen

He left the city for Azienda Agricola Pulicaro, where he raised animals, cultivated the land, studied biodiversity, and worked with forage, vegetables, and livestock—slaughtering and processing the meat himself. One could call him a farmer-chef, though the term is often overused. He returned to the roots of food in order to move forward, grow, and refine his sensibilities before his techniques.

From there, he channelled everything into a pop-up—better described as a sort of time-space window that opened on weekends. He named it Arso, highlighting his passion for working with raw ingredients without technological filters, using live fire as a fundamental element of his dishes, as well as a cultural statement. Arso was never a restaurant in the conventional sense, but rather a life project whose origins trace back to Spain over a decade ago, when he first encountered the profound, primal method of open-fire cooking intimately linked to rural landscapes and raw ingredients.

Tonioni’s approach defines an austere yet noble cuisine, dedicated to the product and its sacrifice—ethical, deeply symbolic, yet also tangible and real. It is an intellectual cuisine, yet disarmingly immediate. Months passed, allowing him to witness the changing seasons firsthand, and then he resumed his journey: stopping briefly in Rome at the former Marzapane (now a bakery), taking over from Francesco Capuzzo Dolcetta and Guglielmo Chiarapini (now in Milan at Ortolan). A few months later, he was back on the road, creating experiences of profound depth—sometimes solo, sometimes alongside equally purist chefs. He cooked in restaurants and bakeries, prepared meals in vinegar cellars and agritourism farms. You could find him anywhere, blending cuisine with philosophy, proving that a certain healthy purism can still thrive in a professional kitchen.

He continued his relentless studies, experimenting, writing, and publishing a book. Now, a new chapter of his journey has begun: “We are ready to open Arso,” reads a post on his social channels. He describes it as “a contemporary rural cuisine project that enhances local ingredients and their connection to the land.”

The opening is scheduled for April 2025, at Piazza del Duomo, 8 in Orvieto—a city rapidly emerging as an exciting new gastronomic destination.

Photo by Stefano Delia