Renowned Bay Area chef indicted for allegedly serving bank robbery with a side of bank robbery

SAN FRANCISCO — He was once known as one of the East Bay’s best chefs who attracted customers with authentic Italian delicacies and a charming persona to boot.

Now, 63-year-old Valentino Giovanni Luchin has become known for something else — being arrested for allegedly robbing banks without any of the finesse he’s known for in the kitchen. On Thursday, a new federal indictment was unsealed, charging Luchin with a single-day robbery spree that netted barely more than $2,800. He faces two counts of bank robbery and one count of attempted bank robbery, alleged crimes that all occurred in San Francisco on Sept. 10, 2025, court records show.

Luchin was charged with the spree in state court last year, but now the feds have taken the reins. Police said last year he used a “demanding” note to steal a bag of cash from a bank on the 1100 block of Grant Avenue, near the neighborhoods of Chinatown and North Beach, and that investigators quickly linked him to two similar crimes. His public defender called the charges “overblown” and mentioned that Luchin was in a “desperate” financial state given the struggling state of the local restaurant industry.

In 2018, Luchin was charged with robbing a bank in Orinda and later sentenced to a year in jail through a plea deal. He allegedly used a fake gun to take $18,000 from a bank and escape in his Mercedes, but police quickly identified him as a suspect and arrested him.

At the time, he granted a jailhouse interview where he told a reporter that he thought he’d planned the robbery out well at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight his opinion had changed.

“(Expletive) happens,” Luchin added in the interview.

Originally from the Veneto region of Italy, Luchin said he came to the U.S. in 1993 and worked in restaurants — including as executive chef at San Francisco’s Rose Pistola — before opening his Ottavio in Walnut Creek in 2010. When the restaurant closed its doors in 2016, Luchin’s world went “downhill,” he said in the 2018 interview. In 2019, he declared bankruptcy in federal court, records show.

Luchin made his first court appearance Thursday, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim. He pleaded not guilty and Kim granted a prosecution motion to detain him without bail while the case is pending, records show. His next court date has been set for Feb. 13, one day before the feast day celebration of the saint in Luchin’s namesake.