Steven Lecchi, chef/owner of Ornella’s Northern Italian Restaurant — which opened on Brooklyn Street in Morrisville two weeks ago — has an impressive resume. In 1993, Lecchi graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. After that, he was the private chef for Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony for four years, spent years cooking in some of Tuscany’s top restaurants, and worked with Joy Mangano of HSN — on whom the 2015 movie “Joy” was based.

Lecchi was the executive chef for Porto Vivo, an upscale Italian restaurant in New York, as well as a few other New York eateries, and worked at a number of other restaurants in Europe, from Rimini, Italy, to Monte Carlo. So, why choose to open his first chef-owned restaurant in the former Munchies snack shack in Morrisville, Vt.?