(CNN) — Tilman Fertitta, the US ambassador to Italy, wants everyone to see he has a very normal kitchen. It’s just a casual setup, a place where a regular person can duck in to eat some cold leftover taco meat out of a plastic tub, as he is doing right now. “I haven’t eaten all day,” he confides.
Fertitta points out that it is, in fact, unusual how ordinary the kitchen is, given that it is part of his $450 million yacht, the Boardwalk. The ambassador, a 69-year-old Texan billionaire, insisted on installing it, to have a place for the ship owner’s family to hang out, maybe flip an omelet for themselves. “Big boats never have a family kitchen,” he says.
This is near the end of an extensive tour of the enormous, gleaming vessel. We’ve come aboard during one of the last stops on a diplomatic cruise of coastal Italy by the Trump administration’s envoy. The summer voyage, which began in June, has included dockings in Sicily, Venice and Sardinia.
Today we’re in one of Italy’s largest seaports, Port Livorno, about 200 miles from Rome. The ambassador and his entourage were late to arrive from a weekend in glitzy Portofino on the Italian Riveria after a violent storm slowed the 380 foot long, six-tier high (seven if you count the small observation deck) yacht’s journey.
Fertitta, who ranks 109 on Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, made his fortune in the hospitality and entertainment industry. His summer project with the Boardwalk is all about nurturing diplomatic relations between the US and Italy by playing the role of approachable host on the immaculate floating mansion.
In advance of the latest in the series of receptions, whirring Dyson vacuums are gobbling up storm debris and deckhands in matching nautical uniform are putting back the decorations that had been battened down during the storm in what looks like fine-tuned behind-the-scenes choreography. Throughout the afternoon we see chrome railings polished, pillows plumped, red carpets rolled out — all while Fertitta’s loyal second officer, Carter Skains, makes sure our curious cameras don’t focus on puddles the storm left behind.
As the ambassador and his wife Lauren Ware Fertitta and their 5-year-old daughter, Elle, wrap up with us in the kitchen, guests have started to arrive: American military officers, in uniform, from nearby bases; regional government officials and Italian business leaders, in smart casual and linen, hoping for American investment.
Once onboard, the guests munch on deviled eggs and mozzarella balls and snap selfies in front of one of the yacht’s two swimming pools before lining up for an official photo with the ambassador.
‘Between envy and admiration’
Everything is intentional on Fertitta’s yacht, starting on the mantel visitors see first with a silver-framed photo of him in a shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder bipartisan embrace with former US presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr. Copies of his latest book “Shut up and Listen” are strategically placed, but there aren’t very many American flags inside the yacht, save the red, white and blue bunting on the outer railings.
Fertitta says he is politically conservative. Records show he has made donations to former US president Joe Biden, but not to the extent he has supported candidates from his fellow Texan Bush family, and more recently Trump, who he has known for the better part of 25 years. He has hosted “most” of the US presidents since Clinton at his homes, but political affiliations remain in the eye of the beholder.
“If you go back and you look at Bill Clinton back then, he would have been a conservative,” he says. “You know politics have probably gone too far in each direction, but I’m happy with what our president has done and I think he’s made everybody in Europe realize how important NATO is.”
Fertitta is proud of slaloming the line “between envy and admiration,” as he puts it, when he invites people to mingle with him shipboard at every port of call: “I’m not doing this to show off. I’m doing this because it works for American and Italian relationships and it works for Ambassador Fertitta’s relationships with all the people in these little towns.”
The tour, which will wrap up before Labor Day, has been cheered and jeered as it has docked in more than a dozen Italian port towns. In Cefalu, Sicily, he walked the same streets as his Italian ancestors and was given archival documents from the city relating to his family. In Venice, he received the same “F**k wealth/No kings” greeting that Jeff Bezos got when he married Lauren Sanchez there last summer.
The ambassador says he is unfazed by the criticism. “It doesn’t bother me in the least because protesting doesn’t bother me,” he tells us from one of the large white leather sofas on the yacht’s main deck. “People would say, ‘Are you going to cancel?’ Absolutely not. I would even go up and talk to the protesters. I don’t mind hearing what they have to say.”
Fertitta is the founder of the holding company Landry’s, which owns hundreds of restaurants, hotels and casinos across the United States. On the high end of the chains in its portfolio, the conglomerate owns Morton’s The Steakhouse, Mastro’s and The Palm. But Fertitta also has his thumbprint on casual and family dining spots like the Rainforest Cafe franchise and Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. He owns the Golden Nugget Hotels and Casinos and the NBA’s Houston Rockets NBA franchise and was the host of a reality TV program called Billion Dollar Buyer.
He believes his business acumen and successful track record make him an asset to President Trump’s diplomatic mission: “I am a different ambassador, and they love that I have the ability to pick up the phone, politically or business-wise or entertainment-wise, and get somebody on the phone.”
Fertitta is funding the summer excursion himself — save for the tight security, provided by the Italian government for an undisclosed amount, which has raised eyebrows and made headlines wherever he goes.
Fertitta says protecting the American ambassador helps the Italian security personnel stay active. “Remember, those boats are out there doing something and those people are out there doing something, and it’s a great exercise for them,” he says. “Because there’s a lot more important people than me that they protect at times, so they’re getting good practice. But it’s been nothing crazy or unusual. …That’s the opposition’s job, to find something wrong with this.”
In many ways, Boardwalk is Fertitta’s unofficial embassy, much in the way the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida is President Trump’s unofficial White House. The stated purpose of this diplomacy jaunt is to strengthen the bonds between the Italian and American people, a task that was challenged recently during President Trump’s spat with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, a former Trump favorite who was the only European leader who attended his second-term inauguration.
Fertitta brushes off the scuffle between his president and Meloni. Trump accused her of “begging for a selfie” last June during the G7 meeting in France and suggested he needed a restraining order against her. “The president has a great sense of humor, okay?” Fertitta says. “And he was using his sense of humor about that.”
Fertitta agrees with President Trump on all the things an American ambassador is expected to, including major foreign policy issues like the war in Iran and the administration’s hardline immigration stance, which is echoed in Italy’s own internal policies, and he says he hopes he can do some work on the tariff battle. He considers himself among a stable of unconventional ambassadors appointed in Trump’s second term, along with Callista Gingrich in Switzerland and Charles Kushner in France. “Italy loves having an ambassador that has a little cachet and can get things done, and who is different and who has Italian heritage,” he says.
The best fried zucchini flowers
Fertitta went through five smaller yachts before commissioning this one in 2022, for delivery this spring, from the century-and-a-half-old Lürssen shipbuilding company. Inside, it has an eclectic, modern decor that Fertitta takes credit for choosing himself, guided by the interior designer Amy Halffman who died of cancer last year at the age of 52.
The Fertitta family’s most valuable art is back in Rome at the ambassador’s residence, which they’ve spent time and their own money renovating since Fertitta took up his ambassadorship in May 2025, and in their family homes in Texas. But the ship has plenty of Murano glass including their new favorite: a thick rope chain sculpture called “Not all chains deter” by Edgardo Osorio, which they picked up this summer in Venice.
One of the few art pieces that they did bring from their previous yacht to this one is a large red Craig Alan painting of Marilyn Monroe, the features composed of his signature groups of little human figures. There’s also an original bronze by Estella Fransbergen in the hallway leading up to the piano room.
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, a fellow yachtsman who became friends with Fertitta after they met on the water last year, played the Boardwalk’s white grand piano when he stopped by a few nights earlier. “I’ve had lots of people play piano on my boats before, and at my homes, but he does something to make it sound better than everybody else,” Fertitta says, pulling up a video of the performance on his phone to prove his point. “You just watch the way his hands dance. Okay, it’s crazy. It’s beautiful and his voice sounds so great right now. He’s an unbelievable talent. It’s great to have him as a friend.”
The Boardwalk’s two swimming pools, two helipads, putting green, spa with his- and-hers massage tables, and cinema exude a new money aesthetic. The yacht has gaudy chandeliers, shiny fittings, a glass elevator and more marble and mosaic tiles than most Italian villas. But for all the sheen, there are plenty of signs of a family home: a KitchenAid mixer and a baby bottle sterilizer, for the grandkids, sit on the kitchen workbench. The fridge, he lets us see, is full of leftovers. What was originally designed as the yacht’s library was repurposed as Elle’s playroom. Lauren Ware Fertitta says she personally designed the play area to incorporate more storage, which she says is somehow unbelievably lacking on the huge vessel. “You never have enough storage to hide things away,” she tells us.
On the tour, Fertitta is excited to take our crew down to the bowels of the ship, guiding us through the polished engine rooms on full display behind glass, and on to the big kid toy room full of tenders, jet skis and what looks like a stealth submarine they call “the limo” to ferry guests from the yacht to shore.
Despite pleas from his assistants to send out a warning of our arrival, Fertitta is intent on popping in on the crew unawares. One of his Italian helicopter pilots is caught jogging on a treadmill in a crew gym Fertitta describes as “way better than ours upstairs.”
Then he slides the door open on the commercial kitchen where his chef, Tammy Steiger, who has cooked for him on this and his other yachts for ten years, is putting the finishing touches on the canapés for the impending reception many decks above. Fertitta gushes over what he described as the “best stuffed zucchini flowers he’s ever tasted” before opening the fridges to show us the bounty of food on board. Steiger, who has been with him far longer than he’s been a diplomat, brushes it off, seemingly amused. His security detail trailing us up and down the boat look increasingly unamused.
Fertitta says despite his wide-ranging business success, the US ambassador to Italy has had his eye on the job for a long time, ever since learning more about his own Italian roots. His relationship with President Trump goes back to 1999, when Fertitta developed a Rainforest Café in the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino. But he says it wasn’t a given that this was the administration that would finally provide his long-desired ambassadorship.
“Being ambassador takes a lot of things to fall right,” he says. “You’ve got to choose the right candidate. You’ve got to stick with them. They’ve got to get elected then in the general election and then you have to have enough juice to get the country you want and for him to think you’re going to do a great job there. You have to catch lightning in a bottle to get a great position like this. I would have to say that even though I dream big, I hit the jackpot.”
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