RESTAURANT NEWS | GEORGIA
La Vetta Sets Its Sights on the Summit in Savannah
Chef Michele Minchillo returns to the dish that helped his restaurant Vitium earn a Michelin star.
LA VETTA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
6:25 a.m. ET, Aug. 18, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Chef Michele Minchillo once set himself a deadline: earn a Michelin star before turning 30. It’s the sort of goal that could end with a very public lesson in humility. Instead, his restaurant Vitium earned its star when he was 29.
Now Minchillo has traded the plains of Lombardy for the Georgia coast. He leads the kitchen at La Vetta, a contemporary Italian restaurant from Southern Cross Hospitality that’s now open in downtown Savannah.
Squid with basil hollandaise
Minchillo grew up in Puglia and attended ALMA, the culinary school founded by chef Gualtiero Marchesi. He trained at Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, worked in Dubai, and spent time at the two-star Aska in Brooklyn. In 2019, he opened Vitium in Crema, where Michelin inspectors singled out his cacio e pepe with shrimp and lime.
That dish made the trip to Savannah. La Vetta serves its version with fresh pasta, Argentine red shrimp, lime, and a cacio e pepe sauce. It explains Minchillo’s cooking better than the well-worn phrase “modern Italian” ever could: a recognizable dish, pulled apart and carefully reassembled without losing the pleasure of pasta, cheese, pepper, and shrimp.
Cacio e pepe scampi with lime
The menu wanders across Italy, with a particular interest in the sea. Bluefin tuna crudo comes with tomato ponzu, chives, and black truffle. Black cod is cooked confit and paired with Mediterranean dashi and panzanella. Local seafood and produce connect the cooking to Georgia, though Minchillo has no intention of disguising its Italian accent.
Tuna crudo
Black cod with Mediterranean dashi
The cocktails take their names from characters in commedia dell’arte. Pierrot, the Dreamer, mixes olive gin with caper bianco vermouth, bay laurel, and balsamic. Arlecchino, the Trickster, combines watermelon-infused gin, bergamot, hibiscus bitter, and saline. Even the nonalcoholic Innamorati gets a role, with pineapple, tarragon, amethyst, and tangerine vinegar.
Tartare with bone marrow
Savannah-based Studio THŌ gave the dining room theater-box booths, an open kitchen, and walls painted in a blue gradient by local muralists Hugo Aguilera and Adolfo Alvarado. The effect is meant to resemble sunrise from a mountaintop. Soon, an underground cocktail lounge called V will add another act downstairs.
La Vetta means “the summit.” Minchillo has reached one before. In Savannah, he has started climbing again.
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