Seizure of Michelin-starred restaurant in Massa Lubrense for illegal subdivision

The 'Quattro Passi' restaurant in Nerano, (a hamlet of Massa Lubrense, in the province of Naples) 3 Michelin stars has been sealed: the Carabinieri of the Sorrento Company executed a preventive seizure decree issued by the Gip of Torre Annunziata, at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and proceeded to seize the tourist-receptive complex. The tourist-restaurant complex is also internationally renowned for its three Michelin stars. And for the star chef, Fabrizio Mellino, who cooked for Jeff Bezos' wedding banquet in Venice.

The investigation, conducted by the Operative Aliquota of the N.O.R. (Operations Unit) of the Sorrento Carabinieri Company, had begun last July and led to the ascertainment of serious indications of guilt regarding the crime of unauthorised allotment for building purposes. "The investigations," reads a note signed by Prosecutor Nunzio Fragliasso, "which made use of a technical consultancy arranged by the Public Prosecutor's Office, made it possible to ascertain how the suspects, from 1982 until October 2025, had built, in an area subject to stringent landscape and environmental constraints, a large real estate complex intended for catering activities and ancillary services, in the absence of legitimate building permits. From the investigations 'it emerged how this unauthorised building activity had continued over time also thanks to the conduct, negligent to say the least, of the Massa Lubrense Municipality, which, over the years, had issued unlawful amnesty provisions, in that they were vitiated by macroscopic irregularities, having been issued not only decades after the relevant applications, but, above all, in the absence of the legal and factual requirements, given that the buildings under investigation, in the time span between the application for amnesty and the issuing of the relevant measure, had been unauthorisedly altered, as also emerged from the Municipal Police checks'.

In short, over a period of 30 years, a purely wooded area of the Sorrento Coast has apparently been transformed - illicitly - into a commercial settlement for the restaurant business, by the two owners Antonio Giovanni Mellino, 70, and his 61-year-old wife, Rita Vinaccia, who are also known for having taken part in the MasterChef programme.