Why go
Rimini as the first bench
Natural leavening, sugar work and a fuchsia counter set the terms at Rinaldini in Rimini, where Roberto Rinaldini opened his first boutique in 2000 and a second in the same city in 2008. He came to the bench through hospitality school and the kitchens of the Riviera Romagnola hotels, which is a pastry apprenticeship served in high season: volume first, then precision. The competition record that followed is unusually specific for a pastry chef. He was world gelato champion in 2006 and again in 2008, Pastry Chef of the Year at the XX Simposio AMPI in 2014, admitted to Relais Dessert the same year, winner of the Mondial des Arts Sucrés in Paris in 2016, and named Best Pastry Chef of the Year by Gambero Rosso in 2019. Rimini is where that sequence started, and it is still the address the rest of the group is measured against.
Macaron, frollini and a gluten-free line
The counter is organised by category rather than around a single signature: cioccolato, macaron, biscotti decorati, frollini, senza glutine, gelatine di frutta, spalmabili and salati. The named pieces carry the house language plainly. Gelée di Frutta arrives in boxes of nine and sixteen. Tenerina al Cioccolato and its white chocolate and lemon version are both gluten-free. Frollini Al Caffè and Cremosa di Nocciole e Cacao sit in the same register, and the Babà comes in two sizes, raised by natural leavening and soaked in an orange liqueur syrup with candied orange. The gluten-free work is the clearest statement of method, because those recipes are written to hold texture and flavour without hydrogenated fats, palm oil or preservatives. That is a harder brief than a conventional cake, since there is nowhere for a shortcut to hide.
A colourful room that also works as a café
The Rimini shop runs as counter and café at once, with cappuccino and fresh brioche early and cake by the slice later. The room is vivid rather than discreet, and the brand’s own phrase for it, il tocco fucsia dell’alta pasticceria, describes accurately what a visitor walks into. Tables sit close enough that neighbours share the sense of one long table, which changes how the pastry gets eaten: quickly, in company, without ceremony. Service moves at the same pace, quick and friendly, and the display case does most of the talking. Nothing about the layout asks for reverence. It asks for a second visit.
Where the house is measured
Rinaldini Pastry S.p.A. was founded in 2018 to carry the work beyond Rimini, and there are now houses in Milan, Florence and Tokyo. The method travelled with them: artisanal and original production, sweet and savoury, held to fresh raw materials of high quality. Rimini keeps its claim because it came first, and because the counter there is still the one that has to prove the recipes every morning. The Babà and the Tenerina are the plainest test of that, one raised slowly, the other stripped back to a single ingredient.
