Alex Astranti

Alex Astranti’s cooking record sits between formal training, dining-room service, and contemporary Japanese kitchen practice. He trained at El Centro College Food & Hospitality Institute, building a base before his work widened across rooms and kitchens. His early reference point remains domestic and Italian, as he is originally from the small town Pietra de’ Giorgi, outside of Milan, and credits his Italian mother as his first and most profound culinary inspiration. His path moved from family cooking to service awareness, then into the repetition and control required on the line. Front of house positions in London shaped an understanding of timing, guest pacing, and the mechanics of hospitality before cooking became the primary discipline. That experience matters in a kitchen because it teaches how food lands, how a table reads delay, and how small adjustments shape the experience. Texas dining provided the next working context through culinary roles at Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine in Fort Worth and Grace in Fort Worth. Those kitchens placed Astranti inside the cadence of ambitious restaurant service, with its demands for prep discipline, station execution, and consistency. Leadership followed as Executive Sous Chef at Stampede and Executive Chef at Salvaje until 2015. In those roles, the work extended beyond cooking to organizing teams, holding standards, and turning ideas into repeatable service. From 2015, contemporary Japanese dining became the sharper frame when Astranti worked as Sous Chef at Uchi Dallas. In 2017, he advanced to Chef de Cuisine at Uchi Dallas and also Chef de Cuisine at Uchiba in Dallas. The record also places him as chef at Mercantile Dining & Provision in Denver. Within Uchi Dallas, the cooking is organized around multiple disciplines rather than a single mode. Hot and cold tastings, makimono, yakimono, tempura, sushi, and sashimi each call for a different standard of touch. Astranti’s work as Chef de Cuisine at Uchi Dallas sits inside that structure, where a menu must move between delicacy, frying, grilling, raw preparation, and composed bites without losing balance. The East-meets-West menu associated with his work includes kimchi cornbread from Uchi Dallas. The dish reflects contrast rather than ornament, setting cornbread’s familiar warmth against kimchi’s fermented savor and brightness. It also fits the wider arc of his background, which moves from Italy to London to Texas and into the Uchi Dallas kitchen. Astranti’s record shows a maker shaped by both service and kitchen discipline. The progression from front of house work to restaurant cooking, then into leadership and contemporary Japanese cuisine, gives his career a clear line of development. His strongest sourced facts remain the training at El Centro College Food & Hospitality Institute, the London service background, the Fort Worth and Dallas kitchens, the leadership roles at Stampede and Salvaje, and the later work at Uchi Dallas and Uchiba.