By age 18, he had worked in the kitchen of a three-star Michelin restaurant, Gualtiero Marchesi, and was responsible for the entire kitchen staff at the Michelin one-star Navalge Moena. In London, Fabio began to showcase his own culinary style at the celebrated Floriana, where he won the Carlton Award for London’s Best Young Chef in 1999. The acclaim, in turn, earned him the attention of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company LLC, which invited him to design his own kitchen and create the vision and concept for Maestro in the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner in McLean, VA.

In 2002, he was named Food & Wine’s Best New Chef, in 2005, he was awarded Chef of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, and in 2006, and he earned the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef – Mid-Atlantic.

In 2012, one year after opening Fiola at Washington, DC, Trabocchi and his team had already received multiple recognitions such as Best New Restaurant of the Year (2011) by Esquire Magazine and a three star review in The Washington Post, as well as two nominations to Best Restaurant of the Year (2012) by James Beard and Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.