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In searching for exceptional culinary experience, one might look far and wide before finding anyone who has logged more time around fine food and wine than Remo d'Agliano, proprietor of Raffaello Restaurant in Carmel-bythe-Sea, Calif.
"I think I was 45 days old when I began - they put me in a little basket in the kitchen," says the third-generation chef and vineyard owner, a youthful sexagenarian whose earliest brush with professional foodservice dates back to the 1930s at his grandfather's restaurant, Pataquino, in Florence, Italy.
D'Agliano - pronounced "dal-YAHN-oh" - tells a life story that is a culinary saga. Seventeen years after his basket-borne Florentine debut, he moved to Paris to receive formal instruction and then worked for a time at the historic restaurant Le Grand Vefour.
After a stint in Switzerland, d'Agliano arrived in London - the year of Queen Elizabeth IT's coronation, he recalls - and joined the staff of the Savoy Hotel, where he was a waiter in its main dining room before being promoted to The Grill.
In his next career phase d'Agliano went to work in Scotland for hotelier Sir Charles Forte, who then was launching what would become the Trusthouse Forte group. In Edinburgh d'Agliano helped apply gastronomic polish to Forte's North British Hotel.
Seven years later, in 1963, d'Agliano came to California's Monterey Peninsula and launched The Lodge at Pebble Beach's posh and pricey dining landmark, Club XIX, opposite the famed course's 18th hole.
Two years later his dream of a classical, European-style proprietorship came true nearby when he and his wife, Danielle, found a down-on-its-heels Chinese restaurant in the picturesque village of Carmel-by-the-Sea and converted the place into the refined and formal Raffaello Restaurant.
Today, after 33 years as Raffaello's proprietor, d'Agliano quietly reigns as a gastronomic godfather among local restaurateurs - a man who has been credited with raising the bar on epicureanism in the area and fostering a return to the use of strictly fresh, select produce from local farms. He also introduced true white veal, set new standards in the quality and breadth of wine offerings, and dashed prevailing stereotypes about his native cuisine.
"I was the first Italian restaurant that didn't serve spaghetti," he says, recalling that in the early days one diner...