After years of planning, the historic California Fruit Building in downtown Sacramento will reopen next summer as a 100-room boutique hotel named The Exchange Hotel, featuring a signature restaurant on the ground floor called Ecce-llente! that will celebrate all things Italian—food, art and design.

The kitchen will be helmed by executive chef Stefano Chiarugi, who grew up on a farm in Tuscany and came to prominence there before relocating to Las Vegas. In Sin City, he ran the kitchens at two high-profile Italian restaurants—at the Bellagio’s Osteria del Circo (owned by the famed chef and Le Cirque founder Sirio Maccioni) from 2001-2007, where he rose to executive chef; and later as executive chef at D.O.C.G. Enoteca (owned by celebrity chef Scott Conant of The Food Network’s Chopped fame) at The Cosmopolitan hotel—before returning to Italy to head up several fine dining restaurants and steakhouses. Chiarugi will be moving from Italy to Sacramento in February.
 
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