Sebastian Gallucci comes from an Argentine Italian family but grew up in Toronto, Canada and now runs two restaurants in somewhat isolated part of Costa Rica’s South Pacific coast in the town of Uvita, called Sebas and Alma. Uvita, and neighboring towns like Dominical, are more remote than the beach towns of Nicoya and Guanacaste much further north, so they remain quite pristine. Marino Ballena National Park, which extends out into the Pacific in the shape of a whale’s tail, dominates the shoreline in front of Uvita, and beachfront development is limited elsewhere, so most new construction is inland, much of it up in the jungle covered hills where Sebastian’s restaurant Sebas moved, beside a waterfall, in late 2025 from the town below. I visited the area a couple of years ago and was surprised to find a nice mix of creative Costa Rican restaurants, like Marlon Acuña’s more modern Scala and his cevicheria Contramarea, living alongside regional restaurants called sodas and some weird cowboy karaoke bar. Development is happening, however. Uvita is already home to a week-long New Age festival that blends electronic music and spirituality called Envision, which brings in more than 5,000 attendees each year, putting intense pressure on the infrastructure, and glitzy homes are being carved deeper into the forest. It’s reason enough to have this conversation with Sebas, as he calls himself. He talks a lot about limiting himself to buying local producers, aside of things like Italian flour for his pizzas. It’s very easy in Costa Rica to just give in and source the cheapest industrial ingredients, because the influx of foreigners has never demanded it. Sebas’s story is an odd one. Again, an Argentine-Italian that was raised in Canada, he was working at his father’s restaurant, an Argentina-Italian restaurant in Toronto. When he got older, he worked in a bank for a little while, then grew tired of it and started a supper club and launched a food truck selling choripan. When the pandemic hit it, all collapsed and he and his wife and a newborn set off to Costa Rica where his wife had already bought some land and they lived off the grid, slowly building a life and farm there while creating a business that respects the land and producers around them. His pizzas have started to get international attention, but the full menu, including the things he doesn’t serve because of the seasons or sourcing, might be even more intriguing. -- Host: Nicholas Gill Co-host: Juliana Duque Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque Recording & Editing by New Worlder Email: thenewworlder@gmail.com Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com
