San Diego Chef To Compete In Barilla's Pasta World Championships | Solare Executive Chef Accursio Lota Gears Up For Global Competition In Italy

September 21, 2017

Next week, Solare Ristorante Executive Chef Accursio Lota will travel to his home country of Italy to represent San Diego and the United States in the 2017 Barilla Pasta World Championship.

"It is so rewarding and I'm very excited to be a representative of the United States and my home of San Diego," said Chef Accursio. "It is an honor to be part of this competition with so many great chefs and to have five Michelin Star chefs, who were all heroes of mine growing up, judging this event."

Barilla 6th annual Pasta World Championship is an international culinary competition where twenty young professional chefs from around the world face off to see who best handles Italy's most popular ingredient. The contest will be held from September 26-29 in the Northern Italian city of Milan and Barilla's home of Parma, known as a gastronomical mecca of Italy. The twenty candidates will compete on September 26 & 27 in Milan in the first round of the championship, where the chefs will be tasked with expressing their vision about the future of pasta through their own recipe. A group of star chef coaches will select 10 finalists.

Samples of Accursio's pasta dishes from Solare

"My recipe for the first-day challenge on the future of pasta is personal, and I cant give it to anyone until the day of the competition, but I look forward to making it as a special at Solare when I return," explained Chef Accursio.

On September 28, the 10 finalists will compete in Milan for the second challenge - reinterpreting a traditional pasta recipe, spaghetti with tomato sauce, using ingredients given in a mystery box. After this competition, three finalists will be chosen who will compete at Academia Barilla auditorium in Parma on September 29 in front of Barilla Founder Paolo Barilla and five Michelin starred Italian chefs to see who is crowned the 2017 Pasta World Champion. 

"San Diego has grown so much gastronomically in the past several years," proclaimed Chef Accursio. "I have also grown as a chef in that time and will do my best, focus, and cook with all my heart at this competition."

Accursio Lota is originally from the small agricultural town Menfi on the Italian island of Sicily. He first entered the epicurean spotlight when at age 18 he was chosen to represent his school at a national culinary competition. He then went on to work with famed Chef Sergio Mei at the Four Seasons in Milan. Accursio moved to California when he was 22 to work at the Biltmore Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, where at one point he catered a fundraiser for then-Presidential candidate Barrack Obama at Oprah Winfrey's home. The first restaurant Accursio cooked at in San Diego was at The Marine Room in La Jolla. In 2012, Accusio and his wife started an underground fine dining restaurant club called Limone, where they designed pop-up events with themes related to the seasons. In November 2012, Accursio became the Executive Chef at Solare, where he has since received numerous awards and accolades.

Watch Accursio's Barilla promo video below and get pumped up for this San Diego chef competing on a global level. Head to Solare Ristorante, located at 2820 Roosevelt Road in Point Loma, to sample some of Chef Accursio's dishes. In bocca al lupo, Chef Accursio!!!