Hailing from a small town in the south of Sicily, Anna Alaimo is the newest addition to Media One Hotel’s Ciao Bella restaurant. The young chef will head up the kitchen to showcase her skills in Italian cuisine and create a new menu for the restaurant that will be revealed in June 2022.
Before joining Media One, Alaimo came to the UAE as a commi and progressed up the ladder fast. She had a stint working with in-flight catering, where she was a chef for business and first-class passengers.
She said: “When I first stepped into Ciao Bella, I felt as if I was going to work in my home country. For an Italian, when you work abroad, you miss something about home, whether that is your land or your products. In the UAE, 85 percent of Italian restaurants you visit as a guest, you don’t always have that feeling. There is always something always lost. But with Ciao Bella, I felt at home and that was the reason I chose to work with Media One.”
Media One Hotel general manager Mark Lee added: “Chef Anna is a welcome addition to the Media One culinary team; heading up the team at Ciao Bella; the Italian debutant to the F&B portfolio at Media One. Originating from Southern Italy, chef Anna will be showcasing her new dishes with the launch of a new Ciao Bella menu in June – watch this space.”
How Alaimo got started
Alaimo learned how to cook at the age of nine and it was her mother who inspired her to cook by telling her to fill the boring summer months by making lunch. She said to Caterer Middle East: “My origin story is not conformed to a regular chef’s story. For me, cooking is a passion. It is feeding people with love. So I would cook to demonstrate my love and affection.
“I was actually studying something else before I was a chef – I was studying languages. I had dreams of becoming a diplomat in the Middle East. But as time passed, I combined both my interests in languages and my job as a chef with my graduation. So I continued on to study Hotel Management Master of the first level. That’s how I actually came to the Middle East – as a trainer in management.”