Michael DeCicco

Training at Culinary Institute of America gave Michael DeCicco the technical base that kitchen discipline asks for. That foundation carried into the Head Chef role at The Surf Club Restaurant in Surfside, Florida, where the pace and expectations of a dining room became part of the job. Since 2024, he has served as Executive Chef of Linnette's | The Dunlin, Auberge Collection, where the setting gives his cooking room to work more directly with place.

At Linnette’s, Storey Farms poached egg with Carolina Gold rice middlins points to the kitchen’s current direction. The dish uses familiar Southern ingredients in a form that reads as considered rather than nostalgic.

Michael DeCicco’s signature dishes include wood fire roasted oysters with bone marrow butter and pickled peppers, Storey Farms poached egg with Carolina Gold rice middlins, ember grilled local shrimp featuring sweet corn, and dilly bean vierge. Each one uses a different register of Southern cooking, but the throughline is steady: smoke, brightness, richness, and restraint, all the local pantry. The wood fire roasted oysters lean into depth and perfume, while the bone marrow butter and pickled peppers supply contrast. The ember grilled local shrimp, with sweet corn and dilly bean vierge, keeps the plate in a summer key without losing precision.

The recognition attached to this chapter of Michael DeCicco’s work comes through the dishes the restaurant identifies as signatures. The menu language is direct about method and sourcing, naming wood fire for oysters, Carolina Gold rice middlins for the poached egg, ember grilling for shrimp, and the Sea Islands and Charleston pantry as the frame around the cooking. Technique and place are kept in the same sentence here, not separated into different claims.

At Linnette's | The Dunlin, Auberge Collection (since 2024), the work stays focused on Southern heritage, local ingredients, and the landscape that shapes both.