Chef Mark Militello hired for relaunched Prezzo
When Prezzo relaunches in Boca Raton later this year, the restaurant will have some serious star power in the kitchen. Mark Militello, a past James Beard Award winner and a famed member of South Florida’s “Mango Gang,” has been hired as executive chef.
“It’s exciting, and it should be interowner’s esting,” Militello says. The restaurant, expected to open in November at the site of the shuttered Rappy’s Deli, will be a collaboration between on-and-off restaurant partners Burt Rapoport and Dennis Max and will mark a reunion of Militello and Max. “I opened Cafe Maxx with Dennis when I was fresh out of school.”
That was in the early 1980s, when Max launched Cafe Maxx in Pompano Beach, a forerunner of fine din- ing in South Florida, with Militello as executive chef. Flash forward more than three decades and Militello, 61, hasn’t lost his passion for cooking or his flair in the kitchen. He has worked as a restaurant consultant over the past decade and spent time at restaurants in South Florida and the Hamptons in New York. For the past two years, he has worked at Josie’s Ristorante in Boynton Beach, mentoring young chef Sebastiano Setticasi, the son.
“I’m always in the kitchen,” Militello says. “It’s what I do.”
Militello says he has consulted for Rapoport in the past, including on Deck 84 in Delray Beach, and that they regularly talk, with Rapoport sometimes asking about young chefs and potential hires. When Rapoport called this summer and popped the