Enzo Febbraro, chef and co-owner with Francesco Ricchi of D'Acqua Restaurant, sits at a table in the dining room that faces Pennsylvania Avenue, in a black shirt and black apron, a heavy gold medallion nestling against his chest. He's bent into a mobile phone he has in one hand while he gesticulates wildly with the other. He's in conversation with a purveyor and some Italian emotion is involved.

Febbraro and Ricchi have both long been part of Washington's Italian restaurant - what shall we call it? not the obvious - um, cabal? Ricchi's ricotta-and-sage-stuffed ravioli caught the salivating attention of the first President Bush and then the rest of Washington's high end diners when he owned and cooked at I Ricchi on 19th St NW. Febbraro, though, is a newer arrival, having turned up 10 years ago from a long drawn out perambulation through some of the top kitchens in the world.

He has wonderful tales to tell of working with London's bad boy mavericks Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. But before he shared hot stoves with them, he'd spent 20 years traveling, working his way through top restaurants in Paris, Germany and Spain. He also cooked for the government in what was then Yugoslavia, when Tito was president. He'd set out at 17 when the adventure, he says, "Was all about being by myself in a new country, with a new language. I didn't know if I wanted actually to do that career." But by the time he was 19 a touch of maturity had set in and he was ready to make a serious professional commitment to cooking.

He arrived in the US courtesy of the Grammy awards. The Italian owner of an LA restaurant was one of a group commandeered to entertain the winners and losers and their entourages. Determined to give them something different, he summoned a team to come over from Italy and put on a tremendous cooking performance.

Febbraro chuckles. "We were supposed to stay two months." More than a decade on, 90 per cent of them are still here, scattered about the country. He stayed put in LA before moving to Las Vegas to work with the team at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino restaurants.

In 1997, he arrived in Washington, as executive chef at Café Milano, a magnet to the capital's European as well as local residents, diplomats, politicians andgeneral glitterati. Before opening D'Acqua Ristorante with Ricchi, he was executive chef of Filomena, cooking for the same profile of Washingtonians. So he's watched how dining habits have altered.

"It's a big change. Americans have become much more educated [about food] because of the new restaurant culture that's invaded DC from different ethnic [origins]. Before, the local clientele didn't like to travel very much. But now the invasion of new ethnicity has been a good bridge from Europe to Asia to here. People don't have to travel much today because they almost brought it all here!" he laughs.

He's a big fan of the capital. "I think it's one of the most European cities in the US. It was designed by a European. It's the new and the old put together. I like New York very much. I lived in big cities all my life. But DC is a small city. Here you can go from DC to Virginia very easily. Everything you can find in New York you can find here, but of course smaller. It's a more home-like level."

He does his best to use produce from the area. But the economic situation is taking its toll. "Unfortunately it starts to become a little too expensive. We can't justify the increase in price to the customer. A lot of them go shopping and know how much is the cost of food." But, he says, they're not enthusiastic about having to pay more money in a restaurant just because the ingredients are locally sourced.

He and Ricchi want to give their diners an authentic Italian meal. They decide jointly what will appear on the menu. "Both of us, where we come from, Firenze (Ricchi) and Napoli (Febbraro), we love similar dishes. The way we cook, we use a lot of extra virgin olive oil, but the cuisine is definitely on the lighter side. We don't make a big affair to put a dish together. We try not to Americanize it very much. People come here to feel the Italian experience."

To be able to offer classic coastal Italian dishes, elements like sea urchin and octopus are flown in to the restaurant, via New York, from Italy. "But you got to be very careful in the spending money for any products you need because you got to make sure you don't inflate price for the customer." He likes to take a traditional Italian recipe and give it a fresh creative twist. But he's never going to go in for the foams and fluffs of molecular gastronomy. "It's just overrated. It's a fashion which will disappear very quick. There's not much audience and very few people can do it."

If you press him on where he likes best to go out to eat himself, he'll tell you it's his mom's house, by the sea. He has a 5-year old daughter who'll tuck in heartily to clams, sweetbreads and other offal. He tries to spend as much time as he can with her and his wife.

"It's tough on [chefs'] kids. Our job description doesn't go together with being married, having a family. When you do a thing with such passion and dedication, it becomes a lifestyle, not just a job six-seven days a week. You work Christmas Eve. You work New Year's Eve. But it's very rewarding. Nobody can get in your head. You can be a chef for 5,000 or 150,000 or a TV chef. You have to decide. Me, I want to push now while I am young. I think ten more years of pushing."

Then he'll retire to the beach, open something modest. "To work 40 hours a week for me would be retirement." He chuckles, and reaches again for his mobile phone again.

D'Acqua Restaurant is located at 801 Pennsylvania Ave NW, 202 783 7717. Main courses cost from $21 tto $34.

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