A mechanical engineer turned celebrity chef is connecting the Southeast – including Aiken – to Italian cuisine through a unique partnership among local friends. Riccardo Manieri has been commissioned for the fourth year to prepare a menu he created especially for the annual Partners in Friendship dinner Saturday, Feb. 18.

Manieri hails from Orvieto, Italy, which has been designated an Aiken friendship city for the last two decades. After graduating from the University of Florence in mechanical engineering, he decided he’d rather put the skills he learned as a young child in his grandmother’s kitchen to work.