abc kitchens opens as Jean-Georges' first restaurant in Italy

abc kitchens has opened on Giudecca island in Venice, the first Italian restaurant from New York chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, inside the new Airelles Palladio hotel.

The all-day dining room mixes indoor tables with a garden patio, part of a property built across a cluster of historic buildings on the island. Vongerichten already runs more than 45 restaurants worldwide and published his fifth cookbook, Home Cooking with Jean-Georges, on 9 September.

A menu built on regional produce

Four star chefs, one hotel: Venice's Giudecca just became a small city of kitchens.

The kitchen serves burrata, handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, cotoletta alla milanese and line-caught sea bass, with seasonal vegetables and local seafood driving most of the changes to the menu. Vongerichten says the format keeps the kitchen close to what Venice's own markets bring in each morning.

"The goal for us is to respect the culinary traditions of Venice without trying to recreate them," Vongerichten said of the menu, adding that the foundation remains quality of ingredients and the farm-to-table approach he has used since JoJo opened in New York three decades ago.

One hotel, four kitchens

Airelles Palladio turns the property into a multi-chef address: Nobu Matsuhisa, Norbert Niederkofler and pastry chef Cédric Grolet all run restaurants under the same roof: Niederkofler built his name on Alpine, zero-mile cooking at St. Hubertus in the Dolomites, while Matsuhisa's Japanese-Peruvian style already spans outposts from London to Dubai. abc kitchens is Vongerichten's entry point into that lineup and his first restaurant on Italian soil, after openings that span Paris, London, Shanghai and Mexico City.

Giudecca has drawn a run of new openings in recent years, trading the crowds of San Marco for water-taxi access and a slower pace; the island is already home to the Belmond Hotel Cipriani and a handful of newer wine bars. Vongerichten has not said whether a second Italian address is planned, but Milan has had its own run of chef-led openings this year, including WAU, the city's first Malaysian restaurant.