How Italy’s Pietro Leemann Elevated Vegetarian Cuisine — Thirty Years and Counting
Photo Credit: The dining room at Joia in Milan, which has served elevated vegetarian fare for three decades. Joia Restaurant
Skift Take
Imagine pioneering elevated vegetarian cuisine thirty years ago in a fine dining restaurant in Italy. It took a few years to take off, but chef Pietro Leeman hasn't looked back since — nary a noodle or tomato in sight.
Haute vegetarian cuisine might be a buzzy trend right now, but Swiss-born and Milan-based chef Pietro Leemann has been tirelessly working on it for the past thirty years.
His Milan restaurant Joia, established in 1989, was the first fully vegetarian restaurant in Europe to be awarded a Michelin star in 1996 (which they still maintain to this day). Leemann comes from a nouvelle cuisine background and his main mentor was Gualtiero Marchesi, the de facto founder of modern Italian creative cuisine. Aged 23, he decided to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle, and by opening Joia, he wanted to shake up the panorama of high-end European restaurants.
"At some point, all the European cuisines were all the same,” he told Skift Table alluding to the predominance of nouvelle cuisine. “Whether you were in Milan, Munich or anywhere else, the same dishes were offered. Creativity was limited, and with my cuisine I strived to disrupt the barriers of the genre.”
After the first three years, during whic
