Martina Caruso

The Path

Catering school gave Martina Caruso the formal base; the working education came in summer service beside her father at Signum in Salina, in the Aeolian Islands. That early stretch tied technique to seasonality, and it placed her inside the pace of island service from the start. The next kitchens widened the brief. She interned at Gambero Rosso in Rome, Italy, then worked as chef at Open Colonna in Rome, Italy, chef at Pipero al Rex in Rome, Italy, and chef at Gennaro Esposito in Campania, Italy. Each post added another register to the same craft: service discipline, city technique, and a broader view of Italian cooking practice. Her work then moved beyond Italy through chef roles for Jamie Oliver in London, United Kingdom, and Pedro Miguel Schiaffino in Lima, Peru. Today, Martina is head chef of Signum Restaurant, back in Salina and working from the place where her earliest kitchen rhythm was set.

The Work Today

That approach places Martina Caruso’s cooking in the category of responsive kitchen work: attentive to place, but not bound by it. The method is not built on force. It is built on reading what the island gives, then deciding how far to push expression without losing the line back to origin. The style is described as simple, light, creative, and rooted in identity. Those terms matter because they point to control. The work does not depend on excess; it depends on calibration, on keeping the dish legible while letting texture, temperature, and instinct do their work. The result is cuisine shaped by travel and return, with Salina still acting as the fixed point.

Signature

Martina's signature dishes include Salina caper ice cream and bagna cauda with raw sea urchins. The pair shows how she works with contrast without overcomplicating the plate. Salina caper ice cream takes a local ingredient and shifts its register; bagna cauda with raw sea urchins brings intensity and softness into the same frame. Together, they point to a kitchen that keeps one foot in island identity and another in formal play.

In Their Words “It is an apparently simple cuisine, light, creative, and rooted in identity, to enhance the territory with a key based on tradition, while still being modern.” The statement reads like a working brief. Simplicity is not presented as minimalism for its own sake, but as a way to keep the dish clear, grounded, and useful to the territory it comes from. Tradition stays active because it is being used, not displayed. “I really like to travel, so I like to bring influences into dishes and play with textures and temperatures.” Travel enters here as part of the technique, not the anecdote. Influences are gathered, then translated into texture and temperature, which is where the work becomes specific. The point is not accumulation for its own sake, but editing—bringing outside references back into a kitchen that still answers to Salina.