Photo by xtol7

Roberto Donna isn’t merely a good chef, but according to Esquire, he’s the best chef in the entire country. Sayeth the magazine in its October 16 issue:

Roberto Donna came to the U. S. from northern Italy when he was nineteen — his accent is still rich with Piemontese vowels — and in 1984 his deluxe ristorante Galileo was the epicenter of Washington’s power-lunch scene. But over the years, despite being one of America’s greatest chefs, he had a habit of leaving restaurants before the paint dried. Now he’s back, at a colorful trattoria off Embassy Row, and he’s cooking his pants off, serving dishes so deceptively simple they seem like sleight of hand.

We’re certainly not going to disagree on Donna’s culinary skills—though some food writers seem to think that his best-in-the-country win is a stretch—but saying that he’s had a “habit of leaving restaurants before the paint dried” is like saying that former Murky Coffee owner Nick Cho was a slightly irritable barista that filed his taxes a day late. Just as Cho once threatened to punch a customer in the crotch and owed D.C. over $400,000 in unpaid taxes, Donna owes an estimated $2.6 million to suppliers, landlords, employees, and the government.

Despite his financial troubles, though, Donna has certainly had an impact locally, working with and training a number of chefs who have gone on to open their own successful restaurants.