An Southern Italian Chef who Preserves Traditionfor the Present Day

Chef Lino Sauro (born 1970), chef-owner of Gattopardo Ristorante di Mare, is a natural advocate of authenticity. Born in Sicily in Southern Italy, his culinary background is strongly influnced by his growing years helping his father, a farmer, in his hometown.

In fact, the Sauro family comes from a lineage of farmers, who have tended the same plot of farmland for at least a hundred of years, cultivating a vast array of fruits and vegetables from grapes, wheat, fave beans to tomatoes. Since he was a child, Lino grew up helping his family slaughter animals, and his childhood has instilled in him strong traong traditions such as making fresh ricotta cheese from scratch every morning. He went on to the "school of hard knocks", working his way up in five-star establishments in Europe, such as Lake Garda and Germany (Stuttgart).

When the time came for him to see the "world beyond his nose", he spend six years on the road, encountering culinary traditions and chefs from Amazones River, Peru, Chile, Columbia, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, China and most of South East Asia, including Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia.

In each country, he sought to understand its true culinary heritage. In Vietnam, he volunteered in a local culinary school in Hue, Vietnam, and taught Italian dishes in exchange for lessons on Vietnamese cuisine. In Myanmar, he fished in rivers, visited remote villages to eat snakes and other "exotic" ingredients that was the norm with the locals. He also trekked to the middle of the Amazonian River, in a village called Yurimaguas in Peru, and stayed with a family who showed him local dishes, from the use of lime to using cocaine leaves for tea. He even visited the local tribes, exchanging his Nike t-shirt for a native skirt made from tree bark and stained with local fruit (which he still has in his collection today).

With his global experience and having travelled the world, Chef Lino was even more committed to the preservation of Italian authentic traditions. He also understood that for it to happen, these traditions need to be updated and refined for the modern-day palate.

When the opportunity came for him to set up his own restaurant in Singapore, he created Gattopardo, a restaurant dedicated to seafood - a celebrated specialty in his home region in Sicily.

He shares, "Gattopardo is a synonymous with Sicily. Whenever anyone in Italy mentions "Gattopardo", it refers to a Sicilian mindset, where you need to adapt to your surroundings in order to progress.
This is my homage to my hometown."

For years, Lino has travelled around the world to build a network with farms as he believes in understanding the source of his ingredients. This is the raeson why even today, he actively brings in seafood from Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, before transforming them into Italian-style dishes.

For example, the Gambero Rosso, an iconic ared prawn know as the "ferrari of prawns" from Sicily, is imported from a family in Sicily that has been fishing this type of prawns for more than 100 years exclusively. He also brings in wild snapper from New Zealand, as they are fished by line one by one, with a limited quota to prevent overfishing.

At Gattopardo, Chef Lino is very particular about using seafood that has been sustainably farmed. He ensures that the fisheries fit the MSC Fisheries standard, a well-respected American standard that certifies that fisheries are well-managed and suatainable, or that they have been certified by Friends of the Sea.

Although he returns home once a year, the beauty of the seasons is something Lino holds dear to his heart. Today, even in Singapore, he is constantly working with suppliers to introduce what he calls the "magic of seasonality" to his menus. He shares, "Even in my father's vegetable gardens, we would have different ingredients every seasons, such as fava beans in April, almonds in winter and figs in September." Once a yeay, Lino returns to Sicily, where he join his father and brothers in the farm, or picking olives for the pressing into olive oil, which he then imports into Singapore, to showcase in his restaurant.

In his free time, Lino dedicates it to his family. His wife Constanza is Chilean and they have two sons, Liam and Noah aged one year old and 3 years old. His other hobbies include sailing, travelling and reading books. He also plays the trumpet, and was part of the local village band.