Pino by Luca Piscazzi opened on 10 May 2026, the day Vione Paros opened for its second season. It is the first restaurant outside Athens to carry the name of Luca Piscazzi, a chef from Rome. It stands on the hillside at Ambelas, Paros, near Naoussa, inside a hotel of 40 sea-view suites, 28 with private pools. The hotel received its first guests in the summer of 2025.
The chef
Piscazzi was born in Rome and learned to cook beside his grandmother. He worked his way up through Apsleys at the Lanesborough in London, La Pergola in Rome and Amber in Hong Kong, with a spell at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona. He then became head chef at La Dame de Pic, Anne-Sophie Pic’s dining room at Ten Trinity Square. Since May 2021 he has led Pelagos at the Four Seasons Astir Palace in Athens, a dining room that relaunched that month.
The name Pino is not new. It was his nickname as a boy in Rome. It first went up over a Roman trattoria, a simple neighbourhood restaurant, that he opened with his wife, Charlotte Luykx, in Glyfada, Athens, in 2025. Ambelas is the second restaurant to carry it, and the first beyond Athens.
The table
The cooking brings Rome to the fish and produce of Paros. The hotel says the menu draws on Roman and coastal Italian traditions, updated for today and rooted in the island. In practice, the day runs in two moods.
Lunch is relaxed and sociable: thin Roman-style pizzas, handmade pastas and seasonal plates to share without hurry. Dinner is quieter and more focused. It turns on fish and shellfish landed locally, seasonal produce from the island and aromatic herbs, with a list of Italian wines and a short list of cocktails. Service is unhurried at both.
Piscazzi describes his method plainly. Good cooking, he says, begins with simplicity, high-quality raw ingredients and bold flavour. That sounds modest. In practice it depends on the morning’s catch, and on a kitchen willing to change the evening around it.
Above Ambelas
Ambelas is on the coast a short way from Naoussa. Vione is built into the hillside above it, and every suite faces the sea. In April 2026 the hotel passed to the management of SWOT Hospitality, the group founded by Giorgos Konstantinidis. It welcomes guests aged 14 and over, a limit that does much of the work of an adults-only policy without saying so.
The spa is Dione Spa, 800 m², with a heated indoor pool, a hammam (a Turkish-style steam bath), a sauna, a jacuzzi, relaxation rooms and a fitness studio. It is among the largest wellness facilities on Paros. The architecture is Cycladic, the building style of these islands, in its restrained form: natural materials, warm earthy colours, and rooms that open onto terraces facing the water.
A restaurant for the whole season
Hotels often bring in a well-known chef for a few nights of joint dinners and a photograph. Pino is Piscazzi’s own restaurant, and it will stay at Ambelas until the season ends in October. That is a deeper commitment, and it is the kind that shows on the plate in September as surely as in May.
The restaurant is close to Naoussa but away from its harbour, and its chef runs two dining rooms in Athens for the rest of the year. For a guest who has already eaten along the harbours of the Cyclades, that is a reason to drive out to Ambelas.
Who is this for
Pino suits couples looking for a quiet dinner for two, and groups of friends who want a long, lively table. Tables are laid on a stone terrace under a wooden pergola that softens the light, above a curved swimming pool, with the open sea and a low island beyond. The setting uses neutral tones and woven wicker chairs, with small lounge corners as well as long communal tables. Lunch has its own menu by the pool, and dinner follows as evening falls.
