Ask a great chef what makes a dining experience great, and the answer is rarely about the food alone. Ask Chef Orlando Amaro — the Venezuelan-born culinary director now anchoring The Hope Farm’s dining program in Fairhope — and you get a list refined across three decades and some of the most decorated kitchens in the world.
A resume built in Michelin kitchens
Amaro has spent 32 years in professional kitchens, 25 of them as an executive chef. His training runs through Europe and the Americas: Spain, Italy, Mexico, Houston, Miami, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., including stints in restaurants awarded three Michelin stars and, in the nation’s capital, multiple Michelin Bib Gourmand recognitions. Along the way he has earned degrees in chocolate and pastry, and he has overseen the openings of nine restaurants in the past two decades — with a tenth on the way in Fairhope.
His route to Alabama passed through Plane + Level Coastal, a Spanish tapas and wine studio that opened in Fairhope in late 2023. Amaro was its culinary director, and the restaurant made an impression on the local dining scene before closing last year. When it did, Robert and Bentley Evans of The Hope Farm moved quickly, offering the chef a way to stay in Fairhope and build what comes next.
The Italian Experience at The Hope Farm
In the meantime, Amaro has been previewing his next restaurant with an Italian Experience served in The Barn at The Hope Farm — antipasti, handmade pastas, classic Italian dishes, and seasonal farm produce in an intimate dining room. The concept is a deliberate contrast to tapas: everything crafted by hand, from fresh pastas and artisan cheeses to fermented doughs and slow, traditional sauces. Amaro calls it an authentic Italian experience rather than the Americanized version, rooted in craftsmanship and discipline.
His Spanish work, meanwhile, left its own mark — Amaro says he was the first chef to bring high-quality, authentic Spanish products to Alabama, cooking Spain in its purest form rather than as fusion.
Seven ingredients of a great dinner
Pressed to define a memorable dining experience, Amaro breaks it into seven parts. First, respect for the ingredient: knowing its origin, honoring its quality, cooking it with purpose. Second, technique and craft — well-executed, balanced, honest cooking with no shortcuts. Third, the human element: genuine hospitality in which guests feel welcomed, seen, and cared for. Fourth, natural, knowledgeable service that is professional and warm but never forced.
The list continues with atmosphere and pacing — the energy of the room, proper timing, harmony between kitchen and dining room — then consistency and coherence, delivering the same experience every time. The seventh ingredient is memory: not just serving food, but leaving an emotion that brings people back. Everything on the list, he notes, applies to a diner as much as to a tasting-menu room.
Lessons from the pandemic
Amaro’s generation of chefs came through the industry’s hardest decade. COVID-19, he says, changed hospitality permanently: workers discovered new lifestyles and never returned, and the staffing shortage that followed is among the biggest challenges in modern restaurants. But the pandemic also forced lessons he considers valuable — value your teams, pay real wages, build respectful environments, and understand that a restaurant is only as strong as its people.
A culinary destination in the making
Amaro’s ambition for his adopted hometown is larger than one restaurant. Fairhope, he argues, sits at a historic moment: exceptional local ingredients, an agricultural heritage, a curious community, and young kitchen talent ready to grow. With the Michelin Guide exploring the American South, he sees an opening — not immediate recognition, but an opportunity to raise standards, build strong teams, mentor the next generation, and help make Alabama a nationally respected dining destination with Fairhope at its heart.
“Cooking is not just about feeding people,” he says. “It is caring. Teaching. Healing. Inspiring.” Fairhope’s diners, for now, get to eat the syllabus — one handmade plate at a time, in a barn on a farm, while the tenth restaurant takes shape.
Inside the Italian Experience Tasting Menu
Diners who handed their menus back and let Amaro cook have been served a multi-course progression in The Barn at The Hope Farm. A February 2026 tasting menu ran as follows:
- First course: Confit artichokes with shaved winter black truffles and a chive-lime fluid gel, served with the chef’s signature focaccia.
- Second course: Tuna crudo with local tuna, pickled peppers, fried capers, Castelvetrano olives, lemon emulsion and micro celery.
- Third course: Cacio e pepe made with Roman-style chitarra pasta, DOP Pecorino Romano and black truffles.
- Fourth course: Lamb neck pappardelle with braised lamb neck, hand-rolled pasta, DOP Pecorino Sardo and olives.
- Fifth course: Seared duck breast with Luxardo cherry agrodolce, yam purée and lacto-fermented red cabbage.
- Dessert: Amaro’s gelato, a Madagascar vanilla gelato with extra virgin olive oil, fennel pollen, sea salt and truffle honey, followed by Italian bomboloni with Nutella.
Some of the front-of-house team followed the chef from Plane & Level. One server, Erick, began working there shortly before it closed and moved with Amaro to The Hope Farm, calling it a special opportunity to learn from him. Before dinner, guests can have cocktails at The Hope Farm next door and sit around the courtyard fire pit, where local musicians such as Steven Sylvester have performed.
A Permanent Italian Restaurant on Fairhope Avenue
The Italian Experience was meant as a preview. Robert and Bentley Evans planned a third Italian restaurant concept for their group on the ground floor of the new Portico office complex on Fairhope Avenue, next to the Fairhope Post Office, with Amaro in the kitchen. The restaurant was slated to open in summer 2026, and the tasting dinners in The Barn were to continue until it was finished. Amaro has said he has embraced Fairhope and the coastal area and plans to stay.