Nicholas Stefanelli's resume reveals a determined man. From an Italian Greek family, Stefanelli, raised in Maryland, toyed with becoming a fashion designer before he settled on his other passion - food. He applied to both to fashion school and culinary school and might have gone into fashion if the culinary school hadn't offered him a place first. Once he'd made his decision, he dedicated himself to finding the best chefs to learn from. Now executive chef at Mio, he's been in the kitchens of Roberto Donna, Fabio Trabocchi, Thomas Keller, at Fiamma, to name the most well-known. How did he identify who he wanted to work with?

"I knew Roberto Donna was one of the best in the country for Italian food, and I wanted to work in the Laboratorio del Galileo." He joined as an extern and worked his way up in a short time to Chef de Partie in the upscale backroom at Galileo where Donna cooked in full view of a dozen or so tables. Then Donna advised him what move to make next. "He said, don't go there, don't go here, it's too similar to us. He steered me to something completely different from Galileo," - to James Beard award-winning chef Fabio Trabocchi, who was running the kitchen at Maestro.

"The food was more modern, though the technique was very similar." As at Galileo the meat was butchered in place, the fish arrived whole. The flavor combinations, the presentations on the plate, Stefanelli says, gave him, "A modern sense of what cooking is now. It evolved my thinking. Being in a hotel, it was at the extreme end of fine dining, supported by things you wouldn't get anywhere else. The hardest thing since leaving Fiamma has been dealing with giving that experience to people accustomed to what people know from Maestro."

Chefs everywhere are obligated to pay the rent, pay their purveyors every month, on time. At a restaurant like Maestro, in the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, the responsibility was spread across the entire hotel budget. At Mio, as Stefanelli says, "A very pretty restaurant", he has had to do without the extras a hotel group can support, like linen tablecloths, stainless steel polishers. "Maestro hired staff dedicated to doing certain things." Vermont Avenue where Mio is located is a neighborhood where it's hard to be a fine dining restaurant. "It doesn't support $20 cocktails at Happy Hour." Nevertheless, he's not about to downgrade his product. What he'd like to do is be more playful with it, so that Mio becomes a twice-a-week destination, "Not just for birthdays."

Cooking has always played an important part in the Stefanelli family's life, he says. As soon as he found himself in charge as an executive chef, he gave his fashion eye plenty of opportunity to express itself. His food has always been exquisitely plated. "You just let your style evolve. You juxtapose things on a plate, make a play of colors and flavors. A lot of people eat first with their eyes."

He's in the process of reforming the Mio menu. "It's still farm-to-table, still interesting flavor combinations." But since he buys all his produce whole, he will direct one part of the animal towards the lunch menu and another towards the dinner menu.

His kitchen ideal is The French Laundry. "It's the best kitchen in the world." He spent one week there, and was struck by its organization and structure. "Everyone was treated with respect, from Thomas Keller to the dishwasher. It was such a well-oiled machine. I got to see what years and years of hard work and perseverance get to."

Stefanelli cooks a good deal in his time off, both at the house of his PG County-based parents and at home. "My wife doesn't cook. She told her grandmother she would marry a chef!" When they eat out, he likes to go to ethnic restaurants. "It breaks the monotony of everyday things and keeps your taste buds fresh."

Home cooks, he says, shouldn't try to pull off a restaurant meal at home. "We work three days on a plate. It's very hard to put out restaurant food in a house. It's important to be able to balance what you eat at a restaurant and what you cook at home."

Mio is located at 1110 Vermont Ave NW, 202 955 0075. Main courses cost from $21 to $27.

Related Information...