Le Repaire’s pizza chef promotes Seychelles on Italian TV |08 April 2021

Luca Catarinangeli, the pizza chef of small boutique hotel Le Repaire on La Digue, made a special appearance on Italian television in February, touting the beauty of Seychelles and its efforts to safely reopen its borders.

Chef Luca spoke to journalist Giorgia Bortolossi via Skype on the Italian show ‘Mondo Chef’, broadcasted by Channel 110 of the Udinese TV on February 19 to over 50,000 people.

The programme can also be viewed on YouTube and has around 2500 views, as of April 7.

The pizza chef said that it was important for him to showcase to the world, or at least to the viewers of the Udinese TV based in the north-east of Italy, that Seychelles has made great strides in tackling Covid-19 and in vaccinating its people.

“I spoke a lot about how Seychelles is more or less Covid safe, the country’s plan to reopen to the world and that people should come visit because the government is doing a very good job with the vaccine. I explained what happened to the tourism industry last year with the closure of the airport and the restrictions,” Chef Luca told Seychelles NATION.

The programme also featured enticing videos and pictures of paradise La Digue, he added.

The remainder of the segment included information about La Digue, where Chef Luca has worked and lived for the past four years.

The pizzaiolo noted that he has never seen La Digue so quiet and sad until April 2020 onwards when tourist arrivals were at a dismal low.

“People are still interested in coming to the Seychelles and I have had a lot of people from Europe telling me how beautiful Seychelles is so I believe that many more travellers will be coming in from May onwards, there would be an explosion of people,” he remarked.

Europe has been one of the hardest hit continents throughout this pandemic with our main tourism targets Italy, United Kingdom and France bearing the brunt of Covid-19.

Nonetheless, Luca is optimist that tourism will pick up this year and if his brief appearance on Chef Mondo helps in that endeavour then all the better.

He added that his optimism is not without cause since Le Repaire hotel and its adjoining Italian restaurant is seeing an influx of bookings and guests in the past week.

Elsie Pointe