Using industry knowledge from his family’s restaurants, mixed in with years working under Michelin-starred chefs in Italy, and a dash of his own personal style, Giovanni Abbate has opened Dolphin South in Pleasantville. The name is a nod to his parents’ Blue Dolphin in Katonah, a neighborhood institution for more than 30 years.

“My first job was washing glasses in the kitchen there,” says Abbate, who later got an associate’s degree at the Culinary Institute of America. After graduating, Abbate decided he wanted to cook in the birthplace of Italian food, going first to Modena, and then on to Milan.