Valentino Luchin is the Italian-born executive chef of Rose Pistola, a North Beach restaurant established by Reed Hearon 12 years ago. The focus of the restaurant is to interpret the food of Liguria. The forefathers of many Bay Area Italians hail from that region of Italy, especially Genoa. Ironically, Luchin is the first Italian-born chef to hold the reins at Rose Pistola.

During his career, Luchin has worked in Italy, Spain, New York, Seattle, and Hawaii. Since he took over the helm in September, he has had little time to enjoy North Beach itself. So, for our interview, I invited him for coffee and pastries at Cavalli Italian Book Store and Caffé. 
   

Cavalli was established in 1880 as an Italian bookstore. These days the Italian-born Santo Esposito owns it. Over the past year, he has worked hard to keep the flavor of the original bookstore with its Italian maps, books and music CDs, while adding espresso drinks, mini-sandwiches and pastries. Esposito recently hired Sicilian-born chef Andrea Cavaleri to prepare some specialties.
   

“I want to make the place more Italian, with Italian soccer on the TV all day Saturday and Sunday, and at other times, popular music from Italian radio on the sound system,” says Esposito.
      

Geez, all that and free Wi-Fi.
      

Luchin and I enter the shop and immediately he and Esposito begin to converse in Italian. Off and on, I understand a bit: “Where are you from? Where do you work? Yes, the Milan soccer team lost today.” In the middle of all this, Luchin begins to sing a snatch of song. Later this would become significant.
     

We sit down to Esposito’s thick and creamy cappuccino. It is so unlike Starbuck’s version, which is always loaded with milk and tepid. We munch on delicate little tartlets, no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, filled with apricot, strawberry or fig jam.
   

Luchin, 44, grew up in Este in the province of Padova, not far from Venice. He was raised in a “food” family: His father was a butcher, and his mother prepared delicious bacala (dry, salted cod) cooked in milk, rabbit, and always polenta in the winter.
   

He started working in restaurants after a family friend told him he had a gift for cooking. He also attended a state school.
   

Meeting his future wife, Michele, in Greece, where he was working as an extern, was a big part of his life and culinary adventures. Luchin followed her to New York City. He cooked there and later in Seattle, where Michele is from. 
   
“In New York at Bastianich’s Becco, I worked very hard and until late at night, because it is in the theater district. It was dangerous,” he says, “riding the subway to Park Slope in Brooklyn.
   

Then they moved to Hawaii.
   

“I really got a lot of confidence working in big hotels in Hawaii, running a specialty restaurant – Italian, of course.  I learned about new fish, ingredients and tools,” says Luchin.
   

Luchin and his wife now live in Lafayette with their children, Julian 11, and Ophelia-Isabel, 8.
   

Our conversation is momentarily interrupted as a song comes
on the sound system – the one he had sung a snatch of. Esposito turns up the volume. We stop to listen. Luchin says, “Belissimo!” The title is “The Best Years of Our Life.”
   

As is customary, Luchin had to audition for the job at Rose. He prepared blue potato gnocchi, smoked duck, porcini with veal cheeks, octopus carpaccio, and a risotto with speck.
   

These days, he oversees a staff of 30, only two of which are not Latino. Not a problem, he says, since he is also fluent in Spanish – another good skill for a modern chef.
    Rose Pistola: 532 Columbus Ave. (near Green), lunch and dinner daily, 415-399-0499, www.rosepistolasf.com
    Cavalli Italian Bookstore & Caffé: 1441 Stockton St. (near Columbus), 9 a.m.-10 p.m., 415-421-4219

GraceAnn Walden leads tours of North Beach on Saturdays. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it