Chef Heros De Agostinis
Beck’s protégée and number two at Three Michelin starred La Pergola in Rome, Heros De Agostinis, took over the reins as Executive Chef of Apsleys, a Heinz Beck Restaurant in London in May 2012.
Heros commenced his culinary career with an internship at Beck’s Three Michelin starred La Pergola in Rome in 1995 and having had a working relationship with Heinz Beck for over 18 years, he proved the ultimate choice to oversee Beck’s Michelin starred London restaurant.
De Agostinis’ culinary interest originally began as a child where he would help out in the kitchen preparing dinners for his family. Growing up in Rome, his grandmother was also a great source of inspiration with Heros spending his spare time gleaning her traditional Italian and Eritrean cookery skills. It was this that laid the foundation for his passion and introduced him to the ethic, spice infused and traditional Italian cooking techniques that he still favours today. It also led him to follow his passion and excel at catering school.
De Agostinis’ internship at La Pergola in 1995 marked the start of what is now a strong mentor-protégé relationship of implicit trust that saw Heros maintaining an affinity to Heinz and Rome which saw him continuously returning to La Pergola between senior positions around the world, always with newly acquired knowledge.
Heros has acquired an impressive roster of experience at some of the world’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants, working together with Three Michelin starred chefs Heinz Winkler and Marc Veyrat. In 1999, he took on the role of Demi chef de Partie at three-starred ‘temple of gastronomy’ Residenz Heinz Winkler, Ashau in Germany, before returning to La Pergola as Chef de Partie. Heros’ first management role was as Chef de Cuisine at Hotel Villa Il Tresoro and he then went on to work with Kempinski for the grand opening of restaurants in both their resorts in Indonesia and Slovenia. He ran the kitchens at Hotel Zirmerhorf in Italy before returning to La Pergola in 2009 and spending the last three years as Beck’s culinary right hand man.
De Agostinis manages a 24-strong team at Apsleys, relishing the diverse mix of cultural and culinary influences as well as skill-set this team brings. He favours a hands-on management approach, assisting his team across every detail from mise en place to taste testing.
