Chef, born in Milan in 1981, of an Egyptian father and Italian mother, both restaurateurs. Creative and self-taught in the kitchen, in 2008 he travelled to Los Angeles where he fell in love with Latin American cuisine, and set up his own restaurant, ‘The Barbershop’. In 2016 he embarked on a one-year culinary world tour: Barcelona, Ibiza, Moscow, Tulum and finally Singapore, where he imported his concept of pop-up restaurant, based on what he had learnt in Los Angeles. After a final stop in Dubai, he decided the time had come to settle down; this is how he ended up in Geneva, in 2017.
After a few months heading up the ‘Fiskebar’ restaurant at the Hôtel de la Paix, he opened his own restaurant, ‘Le Cinquième Jour’ – a restaurant enriched with a strong concept of social inclusion: on Saturdays the kitchen brigade cooked for free, for disadvantaged people, refugees, the homeless or even teenagers with nowhere to go. Committed, as ever, to gastronomy as well as to social issues, Walter founded Fondazione MATER in 2020.