2013 Top 5 Rising Chefs in the U.S. " THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED DOMA

Dustin Trani, 28, began frying calamari for banquets when he was just five years old. It’s no wonder, as cooking is deep in the DNA of the Trani clan. His great-grandfather Filippo emigrated from the Italian island of Ischia and opened his first restaurant in San Pedro, California, in 1925. Three subsequent generations of Trani sons continued the restaurateur tradition. Today, as Executive Chef at DOMA restaurant in Beverly Hills, Dustin Trani highlights his culinary Italian heritage and augments it with diverse influences from his travels around the world. While Trani was trained at an early age by his father and grandfather, after college he went to Belbo, Italy, where he studied pasta making at Guido da Costigliole. He jumped to Croatia to become chef at the People’s Café in Zagreb; at 23, he continued east to Thailand to cook at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. In 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chose Trani to represent California in the Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans, where his talents caught the eye of Ming Tsai, who recruited him as a team member for the James Beard Awards.

Trani was sous chef at Blue Ginger under Tsai in Boston, and worked under Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco and Todd English at Olives in New York. He has prepared meals for a host of dignitaries, including President Jimmy Carter, the President of Bosnia, the Minister of Croatia, the Mayor of Los Angeles and Shaquille O’Neal. Even though we had a good meal at DOMA (which has earned a rating of 14/20), we feel that Trani can do much better and garner even higher ratings. Let’s hope that owner Sonja Perencevic gives him the means.

 Read GAYOT.com's restaurant review of DOMA