Chef
Aurelio Barattini
- Discipline
- Chef
- Based in
- Ponte a Moriano, Italy
i. Biography
A four-generation restaurant practice is the working frame at Antica Locanda di Sesto di Moriano, Lucca, Italy, where Aurelio Barattini serves as Owner and Executive Chef. The cooking is Tuscan in register and family-run in discipline: kitchen work, dining-room hospitality, and regional flavor held through repetition rather than reinvention. Outside the restaurant, private-chef work in Italy and abroad, gala dinners, and representative work for Traditional Tuscan cuisine have placed that same Lucca-based repertoire in formal and international settings.
Career Arc
Regional food representation requires a clear read of place before it meets an outside audience. Early in his career, Aurelio Barattini served as a featured cook promoting Lucca Province at promotional events at Lucca Province in Worldwide, presenting Lucca’s food culture in settings built for public introduction. Private chef work in Italy and abroad added a different demand: keeping a Tuscan point of view intact while adjusting to the scale, formality, and occasion of each service. Gala dinners put Tuscan cooking into a cultural-presentation format, where generosity, clarity of flavor, ingredient respect, and convivial service have to be legible without being overstated. In Barattini’s case, the through-line is continuity: tradition kept active through professional use, not treated as a museum piece. That continuity is concentrated at Antica Locanda di Sesto, where the family inheritance sits inside daily restaurant service.
The Work Today
Tuscan cooking at Antica Locanda di Sesto is handled as lived restaurant practice, not staged regionalism. Barattini owns and leads the kitchen in Lucca, Italy, within a four-generation family story. The work depends on memory, repetition, and restraint: knowing when a dish needs no extra argument, and when sauce, pan, meat, or season should remain plainspoken. Solid Tuscan comfort food, without a drive toward modernization, defines the restaurant’s stated position. That choice is not absence of ambition; it is a trade decision about identity. At Antica Locanda di Sesto, substance and familiarity carry the service: food grounded in the surrounding territory, recognizable to the region, and maintained through use. Traditional Tuscan cuisine here functions as both professional method and family language: direct, hearty, and tied to Lucca.
Signature
Rovelline lucchesi — veal escalopes Tuscan-style — is named among the signature dishes. The dish places Barattini’s work in a local and recognizably Tuscan register, built around comfort rather than spectacle. Its value sits in straightforward execution: balance, tenderness, and familiar regional flavor handled without unnecessary decoration.
Awards and Standing
Recognition for this kind of work includes Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024) and Fedeltà al lavoro e al progresso economico — premio per l'internazionalizzazione (2018). Read together, the honors mark both the restaurant’s dining value and Barattini’s role in carrying Traditional Tuscan cuisine beyond Lucca while remaining anchored there.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Aurelio
What does Aurelio Barattini do now?
Aurelio Barattini is owner and Executive Chef at Antica Locanda di Sesto.
Where did Aurelio Barattini work before?
Earlier in their career, Aurelio Barattini worked at Lucca Province.
What recognition has Aurelio Barattini received?
Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024).
