Il Povero Diavolo

A Hilltop Village, a Serious Kitchen

The road into Poggio Torriana climbs away from the Marecchia valley floor through terraced farmland and limestone outcrops typical of the Rimini hinterland. By the time Via Roma levels out into the village's narrow centre, the agricultural landscape that frames the drive has already set an expectation: this is territory where what grows nearby tends to end up on the plate. At Il Povero Diavolo, that expectation is not misplaced. The restaurant sits in a part of Italy that rarely appears on the itineraries organised around the Emilia-Romagna dining circuit, yet it now holds enough critical weight to justify the detour on its own terms.

Italy's most discussed fine-dining kitchens in recent years, among them Osteria Francescana in Modena, Le Calandre in Rubano, and Piazza Duomo in Alba, have each found their identity partly through a precise relationship with local ingredients and regional provenance. Il Povero Diavolo is operating in that same tradition, though it is doing so from a location that carries none of the institutional recognition those addresses enjoy. That gap between its setting and its ambitions is, arguably, the most interesting thing about it right now.

Vegetables as the Primary Argument

The dominant conversation in contemporary Italian fine dining concerns what vegetables can do when they are treated as the structural centre of a dish rather than its decoration. A number of the country's most technically rigorous kitchens, including Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico, which has built an entire program around alpine plant life and zero-waste sourcing discipline, have positioned produce at the core of what they are arguing about food. Il Povero Diavolo sits in this same current.

This is a meaningful distinction. Many menus claim a vegetable focus while continuing to treat produce as texture contrast or seasonal garnish. The more demanding version of this approach, the one that the EP Club evaluation appears to describe, requires sourcing choices made at origin, an understanding of how processing method affects flavour concentration, and the discipline to let a fermented brassica or a slow-roasted allium carry the weight that protein usually would. Whether the kitchen is achieving this across every course is what the ongoing evaluation process will clarify, but the early signal is clear enough to take seriously.

The Rimini province and the broader Romagna sub-region have a distinct agricultural character: grain cultivation, orchards, and market-garden production in the river valleys, with livestock and foraged ingredients in the hillier terrain further inland. A kitchen in Poggio Torriana that sources attentively has access to materials that do not move easily to urban restaurant supply chains, heritage grain varieties, small-production legumes, stone-fruit cultivars that rarely leave the province. This geographic specificity is where the sourcing argument becomes most compelling, and it is the kind of advantage that restaurants in larger cities with more competition for the same quality tier cannot simply replicate.

Early Recognition and What It Signals

EP Club has awarded Il Povero Diavolo 2 Radishes, with the assessors' commentary noting both the technical ability already evident and the expectation that Gasperoni's personal style will continue to develop. In the context of how EP Club structures its evaluations, 2 Radishes positions the restaurant in a tier that rewards consistent execution and coherent kitchen philosophy rather than just occasional ambition. The note that a 5-Radish assessment is plausible in time is not common language in EP Club write-ups; it signals that the kitchen is being tracked with genuine interest rather than merely acknowledged.

Il Povero Diavolo is in a different position: a kitchen early in the public phase of developing its identity, with a reviewer assessment already noting the gap between current rating and assessed potential.

It is also worth noting that Italy's restaurant recognition geography has historically concentrated around a handful of cities and established culinary regions. Smaller settlements with serious kitchens, including Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone and Uliassi in Senigallia, the latter sharing the same Adriatic coastal hinterland as Il Povero Diavolo's territory, demonstrate that geography is not a ceiling. Senigallia sits roughly 60 kilometres south-east along the Adriatic coast; its emergence as a serious dining destination over the past two decades provides the most directly relevant precedent for what a small-settlement kitchen in this part of Italy can become.

Planning a Visit

Poggio Torriana is a small comune in the Province of Rimini, accessible from the city of Rimini in under half an hour by car via the Marecchia valley road. The village itself has limited infrastructure, which means Il Povero Diavolo functions as the primary reason to make the journey rather than one stop among several. For a fuller picture of the area's dining options, see our full Poggio Torriano restaurants guide, and for accommodation, our Poggio Torriano hotels guide. Those planning a longer itinerary in the region may also find the bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide useful for building out a stay. For international points of comparison on vegetable-forward fine dining at a similar technical ambition level, Le Bernardin in New York City and Emeril's in New Orleans represent how kitchens with a defined ingredient philosophy build long-term recognition, while Casa Perbellini 12 Apostoli in Verona offers a closer Italian reference point for how a chef's developing style eventually consolidates into a recognised identity.