World’s most famous butcher on new Hong Kong restaurant, Chinese meat-cutting artists, his interrupted dream, and giving animals ‘the happiest life possible’

Dario Cecchini, who has appeared on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Netflix’s Chef’s Table, is opening a new restaurant at the Mondrian Hong Kong hotel

He talks to the Post about 50 years as a butcher, why Hong Kong and Italy are a ‘culture of brothers’, and how his dream ‘took a different path’

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Dario Cecchini, arguably the world’s best-known butcher, is opening a restaurant, Carna by Dario Cecchini, in the new Mondrian Hong Kong hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Andrew Sun

Published: 12:45pm, 22 Feb 2024

Dario Cecchini is arguably Italy’s, nay, the world’s best-known butcher.

With an outsize personality and loud colourful presence, it is no surprise he has been mythologised on food and travel shows, from Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations to Netflix’s Chef’s Table.

Despite the fame, the 68-year-old is happiest at home, wearing his apron, behind the butcher block of his shop in the Tuscan village of Panzano. But in recent years, Cecchini has learned to spread his wings.

In 2019, he lent his name to a hotel steakhouse in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean. Then, in 2021, the brand opened in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In summer 2023, the Mondrian Singapore hotel opened Bottega Di Carna with Cecchini.

Next year will be Cecchini’s 50th year as a butcher. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

This year, it is Hong Kong’s turn. Although he has visited many times, Carna by Dario Cecchini, on the 39th floor of the new Mondrian Hong Kong hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon, is his first opening here.