Simone Severini takes over the kitchen at Tides

Simone Severini takes over the kitchen at Tides, the signature restaurant inside The Reykjavik EDITION, as the hotel's new Chef de Cuisine.

The appointment was confirmed in late September, placing Severini in charge of a dining room the Michelin Guide already recommends for its Icelandic-inspired cooking. Tides sits on the ground floor of the EDITION's harbour-front property, built around the seafood, lamb and foraged produce that define the island's pantry.

Simone Severini's move to Reykjavik

Hotel kitchens now offer ambitious chefs what independent restaurants often cannot: budget, backing and supply chains.

Severini was born in Rome and grew up on an organic family farm, an upbringing he has pointed to as the root of his focus on seasonality and provenance. His career since has run almost entirely through hotel kitchens in Europe and Asia rather than standalone restaurants.

He arrives from Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono in Japan, where he held the same Chef de Cuisine title. Earlier postings include The Ritz-Carlton Okinawa, Six Senses Rome and The St Regis Venice, three stops that each paired a luxury hotel brand with a strongly local produce brief.

That mix of training gives Tides a chef fluent in translating a hotel's house style into whatever ingredients a region offers, a skill Reykjavik's short growing season and reliance on the sea make especially literal. Icelandic kitchens cannot default to imported staples the way many hotel restaurants do; the produce list is short and the fish list is long.

Hotel kitchens as a career track

Severini's résumé is a reminder of how much movement in fine dining now happens inside hotel groups rather than between independent restaurants, as the recent head chef change at Smyth in Chicago also showed. A Chef de Cuisine title at a flagship property carries backing, budget, supply chains and training, that an owner-operator often cannot match.

The EDITION brand has leaned on Iceland's scarcity as a selling point since opening in the capital, pairing Nordic minimalism in the dining room with a menu built around what the harbour and highlands produce that week.

Tides keeps its Michelin Guide recommendation under the change. What happens to the menu itself will not be clear until Severini's first full season in Reykjavik, likely by early 2027.