The chef
Giancarlo Milano
30 years working in Mediterranean cuisine. 25 years running his own restaurant on the Costa Blanca. Since August 2024, chef and owner of GIÀ Restaurant in Alfaz del Pí.
30 years of craft
Giancarlo trained in Mediterranean cooking — fresh pasta, risotti, classic Roman technique, respect for local produce. Three decades refining the craft, 25 of them at the helm of one same project.
His track record is not decoration: it's the difference between serious cooking and imitation cooking. Scialatielli at Restaurante Già reach the table hand-rolled the morning of service. Carbonara — guanciale, egg, pecorino, pepper — comes out the way it does in Rome, not the way it does on most tourist menus.
25 years running his own restaurant · 1999–2024
For 25 years Giancarlo ran his own restaurant on the Costa Blanca. He built a loyal clientele that now visits him in Alfaz del Pí — verbatim Tripadvisor reviews confirm it: "made it a top restaurant again".
The handover to the new project in 2024 was not a change of course: it was an upgrade. Giancarlo moved the ownership, the D.O.P. suppliers, the D.O.C./D.O.C.G. wine list and the recipe book to the new venue — 70 seats, a 10-seat private table, summer terrace, and a dining room with dusty pink chairs and original stucco.
GIÀ Restaurant · August 2024
GIÀ opened in Alfaz del Pí, Carrer l'Hort 13, in August 2024. The concept: contemporary Mediterranean, not nostalgic. The menu combines classical technique with current presentation — Acquerello risotto aged one year, hand-rolled scialatielli, the house signature tortello, Galician beef tartare with pasteurised egg yolk mayonnaise.
Anne Milano runs the dining room. Service in Italian, Spanish, English, German and Dutch (Russian and French in preparation). 4.9★ on Google with 204 reviews. #20 of 249 restaurants in l'Alfàs del Pi on Tripadvisor.
His six signature dishes
Every dish at Restaurante Già starts from a verifiable fact — rice variety, regional technique, direct import, D.O.P. certification. The full menu lives at /carta with prices always visible. These are the six that define Giancarlo's signature:
- 01Tortello GiàFilled fresh pasta made every morning, with aged pecorino romano and Soria pork crackling.
- 02Risotto Acquerello porciniAcquerello rice aged one year, mantecato with fresh porcini and brown butter.
- 03La carbonara, quella veraThe classic Roman recipe: guanciale, yolk, pecorino, pepper. No cream.
- 04Scialatielli allo ScoglioFresh pasta with clams, mussels, prawns and cherry tomato. Like on the Amalfi Coast.
- 05Galician beef tartareGalician beef tartare with pasteurised egg yolk mayonnaise and homemade mustard ice cream.
- 06Burrata AffumicataApulian D.O.P. burrata smoked in the dining room, with confit tomato and sweet chilli tears.
In the press
Giancarlo's work is documented in international publications. These are the verifiable mentions anyone can access: