Two Culinary Visions Converge Over Pizza in October

Pizza has long been a canvas for culinary expression, yet few collaborations manage to honour both a technique’s deepest traditions and the impulse to venture into uncharted territory. From 16 to 22 October, FALCONE presents an encounter between two chefs who approach their craft from fundamentally different angles, united by a shared restlessness with the familiar.

Chef Roberta De Sario, originally from Naples, has devoted more than a decade to understanding the grammar of pizza: the fermentation, the dough, the precise moment when heat and flour and air align into something transcendent. Her ranking as number 63 among the world’s best pizza chefs reflects not merely technical proficiency but a willingness to evolve the form without abandoning its soul. She brings to FALCONE’s kitchen a contemporary sensibility tempered by respect for Neapolitan heritage.

Across the kitchen stands Chef Hadrien Villedieu, whose trajectory spans France, New York, Saint Barthélemy, Morocco and Dubai. His restaurant Chez Wam, ranked number 40 in MENA’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, distils a cooking philosophy built on classical French foundations yet enriched by global curiosity. Hadrien approaches the plate as an explorer, drawing connections between distant culinary traditions with an ease that suggests genuine cosmopolitan experience.

The collaboration itself becomes a conversation. Rather than two separate menus existing in parallel, the week unfolds as a genuine exchange of sensibilities. De Sario’s precision and instinct encounter Villedieu’s freedom and boundless reference points, all centred around something as elemental as pizza.

The dishes emerging from this dialogue carry the fingerprints of both perspectives. Cinque Formaggi brings together five cheeses with Medjool dates, thyme and chilli honey, a creation that speaks to both the Italian love of cheese and Hadrien’s instinct for unexpected flavour combinations. Fried & Baked Pizza layers beef tartare with Parmesan cream and a 24-month Comté cheese cloud, a construct that requires both the technical discipline of French gastronomy and the intuitive understanding of how pizza dough behaves under heat.

What distinguishes this collaboration from the merely fashionable is its clarity of purpose. The week celebrates not the novelty of two names appearing together, but the genuine dialogue between two distinct approaches to flavour and technique. Each chef’s strengths remain visible, uncompromised; yet something genuinely new emerges in their proximity.

Guests at FALCONE throughout the week will encounter dishes individually on the à la carte menu, permitting a gradual discovery rather than a singular event. This measured approach reflects the thoughtfulness embedded in the collaboration itself. The experience unfolds not as spectacle but as genuine culinary exploration, where two chefs prove that the best restaurants remain restless, willing to evolve within the traditions they cherish.

Imagery courtesy of FALCONE.