Macau chef Alfonso Iaccarino on the joys of southern Italian cooking

Alfonso Iaccarino is a passionate talker on subjects such as fish farms, anthropology, the perils of pork reared in two months, the Mayo clinic, Alzheimer's, the food chain, multinationals, the change in chickens and eating too much meat.

But he keeps returning to key points: local, organic, seasonal food and the southern Italian diet. And with more than 40 years of experience and two Michelin stars, he knows his onions.

The affable chef was in Macau recently to prepare one of his biannual dinners at his restaurant Don Alfonso 1890 at the Grand Lisboa. The restaurant opened three decades after his first - in Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi on Italy's Sorrento Peninsula.

Opened in 1973 and named after the chef's grandfather, the restaurant was successful enough to pay for the chef and his wife to take a round-the-world trip later in the decade.

After stops in New York, Los Angeles, Marrakech, Singapore and Bangkok he had four days in Hong Kong and decided to visit Macau. "I had heard about the [Jesuit missions] and how they had done work in Macau and I was very interested in the combination of Portuguese and Chinese cultures," he says.

Born into a family of hoteliers and restaurateurs, Iaccarino studied hospitality and cooking at college but he learned the rudiments from a young age.

"From when I was a baby my grandfather taught me about the quality of fruit, vegetables and meat. The village I lived in was fantastic [for this]. Fortunately, it is not much different today," he says. "We don't have a big mall. I like shops where people specialise in something."