SAN FRANCISCO — At this point, it’s probably safe to assume that Valentino Luchin is better at cooking risotto, calamari and grilled lamb sirloin than he is at robbing banks.
In 2018, the celebrated chef and former owner of an Italian restaurant in Walnut Creek pleaded guilty to robbing an Orinda bank and received a yearlong jail sentence, followed by probation. Now he’s back in jail, this time in San Francisco, where prosecutors accuse him of robbing three banks within a single day, court records show.
Luchin, the former owner and executive chef at the now-defunct Ottavio restaurant, blamed his 2018 bank robbery on financial “desperation,” adding in a jailhouse interview with this news organization that “(expletive) happens.” The following year, he declared bankruptcy in federal court, records show. He explained in the interview that he’d used a “fake gun” to rob a Citibank in Orinda of about $18,000 before driving off in a late-model black Mercedes.
“I thought it was a good plan,” Luchin said in 2018, “but it was not.”
Luchin was arrested just hours after the robbery, with the money and a BB gun, police said at the time.
This time around, San Francisco police say Luchin, 62, robbed three banks across the city on Sept. 10, starting around noon when he allegedly 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. Police determined he was responsible for two other similar robberies that same day.
Luchin remains in San Francisco County jail, in lieu of $200,000 bail, facing four charges of second-degree robbery and attempted robbery, according to the jail booking log.
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.
Ottavio offered an authentic Venetian menu, featuring pappardelle with wild boar, grilled swordfish with Caponata, and Calamaretti e Piovra alla Griglia con Ruchetta e Fagiolini, according to a 2011 review of the restaurant by this news organization.
“The open kitchen runs nearly the length of the restaurant. From there, the bustling staff — including Luchin — can keep close watch on which dishes evoke the widest smiles,” the review notes. “Luchin makes the rounds of the tables, as well, and is an obvious favorite among regulars, whose first question as they walk in is, ‘Is Valentino here?’”