A Letter from Our Chef: A Decade of Fire at Divino Taipei

They say that in the restaurant world, time moves differently. If you survive the first year, you are lucky. If you make it to five, you are a rarity. But reaching ten years? That puts you in a selected group of survivors.

As Divino hits this decade mark, I have been looking back at the path my partners, Petra, Luc, Rob, Matteo, and I have walked together. We heard all the alarms and saw the statistics against opening a restaurant business, but the numbers did not scare us. They gave us grit. They gave us a hunger to prove that we belonged.

It has not been a walk in the park. This letter is not just a celebration, it is a moment to shine a light on the chapters few of you saw. And I am the first to admit we got lost a couple of times.

We stared down the uncertainty of the pandemic, standing on the front lines of customer service while fearing for our lives and our families. We have watched the world change so much. When I started my journey as a chef, the idea of a guest spending their entire dinner staring at a phone was not even palpable. Suddenly, we were not just cooking, we were battling for attention in a social media craze and trying to maintain a human connection in a world of influencers.

Our goals evolved during these ten years. We went from simply wishing to avoid failure to a relentless pursuit of excellence. We curated a list of the best Italian wines in the world. We obsessed over technique, applying modern precision to the traditional Italian dishes our grandmothers taught us.

The world noticed. We were honored to have Vogue Magazine name Divino Taipei and Focoso as two of the best Italian restaurants in the country in 2023. We earned our place in the Gambero Rosso three years running for our food quality and wine list. We have been included in the 500 Dishes of Taiwan awards for the past 3 years.

I even had the personal goal of entering the Michelin Guide, which, unfortunately, has not (yet) happened. As I sit here today, I have to ask myself whether we lost our essence in the pursuit of the prize. Did we become too focused? Too fancy? Did the wish to win and succeed as a team surpass the wish to make every single guest happy?

Success is empty without the community at the table. We realized that while awards are nice, they are not why we started this. We started this to create a culture of craftsmanship, loyalty, and love for both our employees and you.

This month, we are quite literally breaking the walls at Divino. We are digging deep to find our roots again. Whether you are looking for the best pasta in the city, our signature dry-aged steaks, or rare vintage wines from our cellar, we want it to be more than just food for your body. We want it to be food for the soul. We want our walls free of awards and full of stories.

To everyone who has placed their trust in us over the last ten years, thank you. For those of you whom I disappointed, I offer my deepest apologies. You are the reason we evolved, and you are the reason we are returning to what matters most. We are not just serving guests in my restaurants, we are welcoming friends.

Grazie Mille,

Enrico Negrini