Wednesday, March 3, 7:00 pm
Members $125, guests $150

To dine at any of Piero Selvaggio’s restaurants, you would never guess that this successful restaurateur had never even eaten in a restaurant until he was 16 years old. Until then, growing up in Sicily, there was no need to dine out when he could dine in on his mother’s simple, hearty cooking. After moving to the United States, Selvaggio longed for authentic Italian cooking, and when he opened Valentino in Santa Monica in 1972, he forever changed the way Americans thought about Italian cuisine.

“I’d never had Italian food that good,” recalled Ann Herold in Saveur, noting that she was “knocked out by the experience.” The New York Times named it “the best Italian restaurant in the United States.” And we’ve nominated it three times for the year’s Outstanding Restaurant; in 1996, it won our Outstanding Service award. More than 30 years after its establishment, Valentino in Santa Monica is still going strong, while its Las Vegas outpost is also thriving, thanks to two very talented chefs, Stephan Samson and Luciano Pellegrini.

Chef Stephan Samson recently took over the kitchen at the original Valentino after several years working in the Selvaggio empire. Samson’s appreciation for authentic Italian cooking came from the summers he spent in Bologna with his family. At the age of 25, he enrolled in the culinary program at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. He spent several years working as a line cook before contacting Piero Selvaggio, who arranged for him to work for a year in different regions of Italy at some of the country’s most prestigious restaurants, including the Michelin three-star Dal Pescatore. When Samson returned to the United States, he spent six months at Valentino Santa Monica preparing for the opening of Valentino Las Vegas, where he became chef de cuisine. He also served as executive chef at Selvaggio’s Sherman Oaks restaurant, Posto, before coming full circle and taking over the kitchen at the Valentino Santa Monica.

By age 13, Lombardy native Luciano Pellegrini had begun his formal training. After graduation, he worked at the Michelin one-star restaurant Locanda dell’Angelo in Bergamo, followed by stints at restaurants in Rimini and Lake Garda. Piero Selvaggio lured him to Los Angeles in 1985 to join the team at his restaurant Primi, and within a couple of years he was heading up the kitchen. Selvaggio then tapped Pellegrini to be the executive chef at Posto before making him executive chef and partner at Valentino Las Vegas in 1999, where he has won numerous accolades, including two Epicurean Awards from Las Vegas Life magazine and a James Beard Award nomination for Best Chef: Southwest in 2003.