Lara Gilmore

The Climb

In 2019, the creation and opening of Casa Maria Luigia were led by Lara Gilmore at Casa Maria Luigia in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The work sits in the category of build-out, not maintenance: shaping a project from the ground up, with the demands that come with turning a concept into a working place. That kind of role asks for more than taste. It requires structure, timing, and the capacity to hold an idea through its early, unsettled stages. Today, Lara Gilmore is an inventive restaurateur and business partner of Osteria Francescana, Al Gatto Verde, and Casa Maria Luigia. Those roles point to a practice that spans multiple rooms and multiple registers, each with its own demands. The connective work here is hospitality as craft: keeping the project coherent, setting the tone, and making sure the experience reads as considered from first contact onward.

Today

Lara Gilmore has described her working style as more reflective than immediate: “I'm a little bit more pensive and ruminate over things. Then I consider the different points of view and express my opinion.” That is a useful model for collaborative work in hospitality. The habit is not delay for its own sake; it is a method of testing ideas before they are fixed into place, so the final position arrives with context behind it.

In Their Words “There's a duality going on that is often two sides of the same coin. It's a yin and yang situation with differing points of view that lead to our decision-making process.” “I'm a little bit more pensive and ruminate over things. Then I consider the different points of view and express my opinion.”

Recognition

Lara's honors include Woodford Reserve Icon Award. Read plainly, it marks recognition for a body of work where restraint matters as much as expression. Across the projects she has helped shape, Gilmore’s contribution sits in the balancing act: pace against patience, view against counterview, and the steady work of making those pressures usable.