Chef Marino D’Antonio’s culinary odyssey across the world – from Italy to Macau

For Marino D’Antonio, the newly appointed executive chef at 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana Macau, cooking is clearly in his blood.

Sipping an espresso in quintessential Italian style, D’Antonio recounts how his father travelled from southern Italy to Lombardy to visit his sister who had opened a restaurant after moving there with her husband. It was there – because of that restaurant – that D’Antonio’s parents met and fell in love. It’s the perfect origin story for a chef: Fellini would have been proud.

D’Antonio was always destined to become a chef, it seems. His parents held respectable jobs in engineering and accounting, but he admits to being “very naughty” at school and not particularly inclined to studying. Following in his parents’ footsteps seemed unlikely. “There weren’t many opportunities [in my hometown] unless you wanted to be a metal worker,” D’Antonio says, smiling wistfully. “And for sure, university was not something I was looking forward to.”

As the youngest of three children and the only boy in the family, D’Antonio was given leeway and indulged slightly more than his two older sisters. A sign of things to come was his fondness for dipping bread into his aunt’s cooking to steal the sauce. Still, his father was no disciplinarian: “As long as you’re happy, do what you like” were his words, per D’Antonio.

“His name was Paolo. He was a tall guy with a long beard. And he was really a character, you know,” chuckles D’Antonio, who is every bit as warm in person as his press photos might suggest.

“He would help out on a special occasion or when there was some celebration like a baptism or a confirmation. He would prepare some really special food, some very articulate dishes, because my auntie’s food was more home style. And that’s why I think I started to be interested in cooking, to have a passion for seeing the transformation of ingredients.”