Chef Will Foden said he is bringing the food and culture of Italy to the Westlake area as Visconti Ristorante’s chef de cuisine.

The six-month-old restaurant, located inside Hotel Granduca, 320 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., West Lake Hills, offers authentic Italian staples and a relaxed, inviting atmosphere for both hotel guests and community members.

“Our goal here is to create an oasis where people can come, get the views and get the feeling like they are in a custom [Italian] villa,” Foden said.

Raised in Boston, Foden said he fell in love with cooking at an early age. He immersed himself in the art of cooking, working long hours in restaurant kitchens and spending time reading up on cooking and honing his craft.

He also took painting classes throughout his childhood and was offered a full scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but turned it down.

Foden found he kept going back to cooking, so at the insistence of his mother, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York.

After graduation, in 2000 he returned home to Boston and began working as Chef Jody Adams’ sous-chef at Rialto in Harvard Square, Massachusetts. Foden was also Dante de Magistris’ chef de cuisine at Restaurant Dante in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he said he found his niche in Italian food.

From Restaurant Dante, Foden moved to Bina Osteria, where he worked as executive chef until 2009.

Needing a change, Foden next moved to New York City to work for a consulting firm that specialized in small, privately owned restaurant relaunches.

In 2014, his girlfriend’s job as a pharmacist brought them south to Austin. Settling into his new home, Foden said he decided to take things slow.

“I wanted to be kind of selective of where I worked,” he said, adding he wanted to make sure he worked somewhere authentically Italian.

“I think you’re starting to see [Italian restaurants] come around now,” he said. “I think it’s a very popular style of food; whether it be Italian or Mediterranean-style in general, it’s more rustic, more ingredient-focused. [Farmers]grow a lot of ingredients in Austin that are found in a lot of Italian cuisine, so I think that matches well together.”

He eventually settled on Garbo’s in North Austin, where he worked as executive chef until Visconti Ristorante’s executive chef, Tom Parlo, offered him the position of chef de cuisine last June.

“I knew it’d be a great opportunity, and I didn’t want to pass on it,” he said.

Foden designed the menus, which he said change three to four times a year, depending on which local ingredients are readily available.

“Austin matches very well for the style of [Italian] food,” he said.

Sticking to the authentic Italian theme he knows so well, Foden said he makes sure the menu reflects owner Georgio Borlenghi’s Milanese roots.

“Our food has to be simplistic,” he said. “It starts with the ingredients, and then we try to keep it to three or four components to each dish.” 

He said one of the biggest challenges of working for a new restaurant is building the clientele. While hotel guests naturally gravitate to the restaurant, many of Visconti’s patrons are members of the community.

“We want people from the neighborhood to come in, get themselves a glass of wine, enjoy some good food, compliments of us, and get a feeling of how inviting and enjoyable it is to hang out at this bar and this restaurant,” he said. 

320 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., West Lake Hills 512-306-6400 www.granducaaustin.com Hours: Mon.-Sun. 6:30-10:30 a.m. (breakfast), Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. (lunch), 5-10 p.m. (dinner), Sun. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. (brunch)