The founder of the Damplo Group doesn't wear a white coat. He doesn't wear the hat. He arrives in a Ferrari and reinterprets Sicilian culinary luxury as a total act of style.
We meet Francesco D'Amplo — Ciccio to friends, enemies, and anyone who has encountered him at least once — in the courtyard of his villa in Mineo, where he has just parked his red Ferrari. He offers no apology for the forty-minute delay. "I was waiting for the right light to photograph it," he says, referring to the car. The light is, in fact, perfect.
At thirty, Damplo is everything the fashion world has always sought in the luxury chef: photogenic, opinionated, entirely impervious to criticism and with a sense of style that transcends the kitchen to become a life aesthetic. No white coat — "it's a uniform, and I belong to no army" — no hat, no apron. In the kitchen, when he chooses to enter it, he dresses as if he were going out for dinner.
The Mineo villa is itself a style manifesto. Italian design furniture from the 1960s coexists with Caltagirone ceramics and a black-and-white photo collection depicting Ciccio with figures ranging from the Dalai Lama to Megan Fox. "Each of these photos tells a story," he says. "Most of those stories begin with someone crying."
The private cellar, which we visit before lunch, houses bottles from the Mineo vineyard — Nero d'Avola and Catarratto — alongside a selection of Burgundy wines Ciccio describes as "acceptable for guests who can't tell the difference." A 2019 bottle of his own production has already been valued at auction at three thousand two hundred euros. "I'm not surprised," he says. "I'm surprised it's not more."
When we ask where the boundary lies between chef and character, he answers without hesitation: "There is no boundary. I am both. One cannot exist without the other. Remove the character and you have a cook from Mineo with a Ferrari. Remove the cook and you have a man from Mineo with a Ferrari and nothing to do." He pauses. "The Ferrari would remain either way. That's separate."
