Chef Ivan Beacco

Ivan Beacco was raised in the coastal northern Italian city of Trieste, a stone throw of distance from Venice. He was exposed to a style of cooking that fused classic Italian fares with “Mittel European” traditions.

From early on, Beacco knew he enjoyed creating food to please his friends and family. After the mandatory school education in Italy, when he was 14, he decided to take a much different path from his peers: he enrolled in a professional cooking school in a city far from his own.

After two years of basic culinary education he decided that the best way to learn the craft was behind the stove and he started working seasonally on the Adriatic Riviera during the summer and in the mountain retreats of Dolomiti in winter.

After 4 years of working in classic Italian restaurants and hotels in Italy he decided to start exploring new venues and went on to work first in Vienna in a small restaurant close to the famous Naschmarkt market where he started enjoying working with small local purveyors of fresh food, thereby supporting the micro economy, and being introduced to the organic cuisine at the same time. He will be faithful to this habit later on, while working in New York City and getting the best ingredients from the local Green Market in Union Square. 

On his culinary journey, Beacco moved on to work in a small town near Bruxelles where the French influence added up to his ever growing passion for cosmopolitan cuisine.

When he was 22 years old his desire of expanding his culinary horizons brought him to the mecca of restaurant world: New York City where he started working the starters station at Borgo Antico Restaurant, a Tuscan Emilian inspired restaurant near the vibrant Union Square.

After a couple of years his craving for different approaches on the Italian ideas brought him to work with chef Maurizio Marfoglia at Revel, a modern Italian joint in the Upper West Side and later on at Marfoglia’s new concept restaurant Carmaya in the hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the fusion between Asian, Italian and French cuisine helped Beacco expand his culinary background.

After much experimenting and wandering in different direction from Hell’s Kitchen Locanda dei Vini, where for the first time he obtained the coveted position of Executive Chef, to Tribeca’s Tuscan staple Pepolino; he was also working freelance for the Italian Ambassador to the UN Paolo Vento organizing his private gatherings for heads of states and ambassadors, Beacco finally decided to go back where he first started at Borgo Antico, this time as Executive Chef where he could put to work his many years of experience with his own vision of Italian cuisine.

In 2009 he ventured as chef and partner in a roman restaurant in the up and coming neighborhood of Long Island City. In little more than 2 years he’s been featured in the New York Times in four articles and made his first appearance within the Michelin guide. In 2012 he decided to go down a different path and joined the crew at Acqua in one of the oldest blocks in Manhattan.

He became a certified Master Chef in Italian Cuisine in 2011 with the recognition bestowed by Academia Barilla to few hundreds chefs around the world. He later kept collaborating with Barilla America performing cooking demos and lessons at Casa Barilla during the week of celebrations leading to Andrea Bocelli’s concert in Central Park and the famed gala dinner prepared under the lead of Massimo Bottura.

In 2012 and 2014 he was included in the annual publication of the Best Chefs America for the New York metropolitan area

In 2013 he started collaborating with Wellness in The School program and chef Bill Telepan to improve the food served in public schools and educate children and adults about their portable of a healthy diet.

During that formative period he learned how rewarding teaching may be and the craving for spreading knowledge lead him, in 2016, to found his own Culinary School company: Red Inside.

Since then he reinvented himself as a teacher, entrepreneur and personal chef.

Besides being a chef, Ivan Beacco belongs to the Taoist Tai Chi Society, American Mensa, he is a Freemason and a husband of his beautiful Argentinean wife and father of a 12 years old boy and a 8 years old girl.