Zucchero

Sugar held in check

Sweetness is the material Fabrizio Fiorani, pastry chef at Zucchero in Kyoto, keeps under discipline before the plate leaves the pass. His route to that station runs through Italian rooms where finish mattered as much as appetite: kitchen work at Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, The Cesar at Hotel La Posta Vecchia, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, then pastry at La Pergola in Rome. Those houses gave him a base in proportion, sequencing, and the last course as part of the meal, not an ornament attached after it. Japan sharpened the method. From 2015–2021, Fiorani worked as Pastry Chef at Bvlgari Il Ristorante Luca Fantin in Tokyo, while also developing desserts and products for Bulgari in Japan until 2021. That dual practice matters at Zucchero because pastry here has to answer two kinds of Italian memory: the rustic comfort implied by the name, and the controlled visual register of a maker trained in luxury counters, plated dessert, chocolate, and restaurant service.

A daily menu with seafood at the center

Zucchero works from an à la carte structure, with the kitchen changing the menu around seasonal seafood and direct fish wholesaler ties. The method is plain in the best sense: fresh fish carpaccio, seafood and vegetable fritti misti, scallop and beet cold pasta, squid ink tagliolini with squid ink sauce, beef cheek in red wine stew, veal Milanese cutlet with salad. The house leans on Italian forms that can take Kyoto’s ingredient discipline without becoming fusion for its own sake. Raw fish needs knife work and restraint; fritti needs heat, timing, and batter light enough to leave the catch visible; squid ink asks for depth without muddiness. Fiorani’s pastry practice sits after that progression. His known signatures, including ‘Tra l’onirico e il reale’ and ‘Mountain Lovers,’ point to dessert as composition, but the useful lesson is control: sweetness, acidity, texture, temperature, and form calibrated against what came before. In a room built around choice rather than a fixed tasting sequence, the final course has to find its place each night.

The room near the palace

The room is a relaxed hideaway south of Kyoto Imperial Palace, intimate enough for the counter and the pass to feel connected. Zucchero does not ask the guest to surrender the evening to a rigid progression. It lets them choose, return to a plate, order for appetite, and follow the day’s fish through Italian grammar. That mood matters to the craft. A carpaccio can arrive without ceremony and still carry the morning’s sourcing; a stew can come to the table with the patience of a braise rather than the posture of a set piece. The name means sugar in Italian, but the place is not built around confection alone. It is a restaurant where seafood, pasta, meat, and dessert share the same measure.

Opened with its own pace

Zucchero opened around March 2024, early enough in its life that the house is still defining its cadence in Kyoto. The restaurant has a daily seafood menu and serves carpaccio, fritti, ink pasta, red wine stew, and the pastry finish Fiorani brings from Italian dining rooms into Zucchero.