To open an Italian restaurant, to share with the French the treasures of a transalpine gastronomy that exists but is too often ignored: this was Claudio’s wish when he arrived in France at the end of the 1980s. A young, enthusiastic Italian chef with a head full of recipes and a desire to invent new ones… Fortuna audaces juvat, as the Romans used to say. Claudio has made this promise his own. Since fortune favors the bold, he opened his first Italian restaurant, La Petite Romantica, in Levallois-Perret.

Then came the adventure of La Romantica. In 1990, he bought a business in a backyard a stone’s throw from Clichy town hall. A fireplace, a veranda, a garden… what could be more ordinary? Our chef has turned it into a preserved, intimate place, away from the noise of the city, peaceful and entirely dedicated to the pleasures of the table. In 2012, the décor was redesigned. More refined, more Italian, more comfortable, on the dining room side… Like a Roman or Florentine terrace, with plant walls and fountains, on the garden side. We’re reminded of Ettore Scola’s beautiful film La terrazza.

As the years go by, Claudio forges his temperament. He remains imaginative, which is rare in this business. Especially when you become a company director. For the story continues. The idea was to create “bistronomic” Italian restaurants, still offering elaborate cuisine but with simpler products than at La Romantica. Today, there are seven Romantica Caffés: five in Paris, one in Neuilly-sur-Seine and another in Deauville. Then there’s Barocco, in the Levallois business district, and Nove Sette, a maisonettef nestled in the Batignolles district, where the Cicchetti bar has also just opened.

Imaginative, then. Ambitious, to be sure. Passionate, to say the least. Just listen to Claudio Puglia rave about the quality of the products he receives every day from small Italian producers. And then, when he talks about his creative cuisine, from which he has eliminated butter in favor of olive-growing, we now know what the word Italian restaurant really means.