If your idea of fine dining is silver service and starched tablecloths, think again. In a tiny side street in the small city of Lecce in Southeastern Italy, there is a discreet sign with the word BROS’ written on it. Ring the doorbell, get your wrist stamped, pass through a curtain and you will find yourself in a pared-back and contemporary space beneath ancient, vaulted ceilings where Trap music is playing in the background. This is the home of Salento’s first Michelin starred restaurant and its chef patrons Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Potì, a young couple with a fresh, daring and rebellious take on haute cuisine.

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BROS’ has never been just a restaurant. Since its opening in 2016, in the heart of Lecce, the project by Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Potì – partners in life and in the kitchen – has established itself as a reality capable of breaking the mold of classic dining. In just two years, it earned the first Michelin star in Salento, but for the two chefs, this achievement was never a goal: it was rather the natural consequence of a relentless pursuit of excellence, without compromise. «When we opened BROS’», says Floriano, «we didn’t think of luxury in the traditional sense. We wanted a radical, instinctive experience, truly outside the box.» Yet, their cuisine ended up redefining the very idea of fine dining. For Isabella, luxury is not just about caviar and champagne: «If you push excellence, you inevitably reach luxury, but without turning it into a cage. Now we want to bring this idea to a context where time, space, and taste become elements of a more immersive experience.»

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Far from the large, cosmopolitan cities of the north of Italy, BROS’, a fine dining establishment in the southern city of Lecce, is quickly gathering fame and recognition.

Run by Chefs Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Potì, it obtains inspiration from the region that surrounds it, melding tradition, forgotten products, and processes with the highly technical, creative, and contemporary skill set of its two internationally-trained chef patrons. Together, they have created a style of cuisine that excites the mind and palate, drawing guests into a world of aromatic intensity and masterful complexity of texture and flavour.

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HERE’S WHY CONTEMPORARY ART MAY BE THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTANDING HIS THINKING

Call it the negative restaurant review heard ’round the world.
Yes, we’re talking about that one, in which writer Geraldine DeRuiter posted a scathing review on her website Everywhereist.com about Bros’, a restaurant in Lecce, in Southern Italy, that has the honour of being the only restaurant in the country with a Michelin star. DeRuiter described a recent pricey multi-course meal (as much as €200 per person) at what she called “the worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever.”

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We’re back at Isabella Potì and Floriano Pellegrino’s to marvel once again at their research into Salento’s gastronomic roots and at the consistency/skill with which they tread a narrow path. With constantly great results

‘We will take you on a journey through the unpleasant flavours of Salento’.
There you have it: we didn’t write a line when, a little less than a year and a half ago, an American blogger discovered that Bros in Lecce is not the typical trattoria with a cooking grandmother that she may have coveted, and so she came down hard, from the height of her unknown expertise. We did not write a line because we had already expressed our opinion on Bros far and wide, over the years, for example here and here and here, so what was there to add? We’re not big fans of clickbait polemics. But when listening to the words we quoted at the beginning, pronounced by maître-sommelier Rubén Pérez Jiménez, what was already evident becomes even more logical and obvious: Bros is not a place for everyone. I’m not saying that it presupposes possessing a trained palate. Because, after all, who decides when a palate is ‘trained’? It certainly requires the diner to be willing to be different, to be surprised, and to overcome gastronomic prejudices, which often have the deepest roots. Isabella Potì and Floriano Pellegrino make food culture by drawing on tradition while giving it a trendy-eccentric-provocative image and thus causing a short-circuit. They appear glossy and globalised though their menu is written in dialect; they’re metropolitan but have a trattoria in Scorrano, they’re contemporary but look to the past, to the recovery of forgotten products and processes. An original glocal approach, a kind of Salento cosmopolitanism that is a gem to be preserved.

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Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Potì from restaurant Bros’ are young, beautiful, and talented. Their confidence and smart marketing have divided the Italian food world in two. Love them or hate them, Pellegrino and Potì aren’t interested in staying “right” as in the mainstream. Or fucking right, as Floriano himself has probably put it. Meet the rebel chefs from southern Italy.

Spaghetti Scorranese and Pasta Burro Rancido e Bottarga by Bros’

Restaurant Bros’ opened in 2016 in the baroque city of Lecce, in Apulia, on the Italian heel. Two years later, their first star arrived in the Michelin Guide. From the beginning, Pellegrino’s brothers were involved as co-owners, hence the name, but today the brothers have preferred to go other ways. Apulia is a region more associated with Italian mothers, who cook traditional dishes in large steaming pots, and not ambitious fine dining. This is some-thing that Bros’ intends to change.

Pellegrino and Potì returned home after years of work abroad, accruing a great deal of experience in the process. Potì, among other jobs, worked at Hibiscus in London and Geranium in Copenhagen, while Pellegrino was at Noma as well as three-star Azurmendi with chef Eneko Atxa. But it is Martín Barasategui, at the three-star Spanish restaurant Lasarte, and one of Spain’s most influential chefs of all time, who is their mentor. In addition to Bros’, Pellegrino and Potì recently opened a traditional trattoria called Roots and a pastry bakery called Sista’. They have also taken over the old local football stadium and started a rugby team.

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HERE’S WHY CONTEMPORARY ART MAY BE THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTANDING HIS THINKING

Chef Floriano would link to answer as follows starting from drawing

Call it the negative restaurant review heard ’round the world.

Yes, we’re talking about that one, in which writer Geraldine DeRuiter posted a scathing review on her website Everywhereist.com about Bros’, a restaurant in Lecce, in Southern Italy, that has the honour of being the only restaurant in the country with a Michelin star. DeRuiter described a recent pricey multi-course meal (as much as €200 per person) at what she called “the worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever.”

She described “meat molecules,” (or “meat droplets,”) “frozen air,” “rancid ricotta,” numerous foams and now, most famously (or infamously) a citrus foam that was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth, absent utensils.

So how did Bros’ chef Floriano Pellegrino choose to respond? With a comparison to abstract art of course.

His written response, shared with Artnet News and other curious media, featured three artworks: a basic drawing of a man on a horse; Jacques Louis David’s dramatic depiction of Napoleon Bonaparte on a horse; and finally a colorful but somewhat crude-looking abstract painting that vaguely suggests a figure on a horse or beast. The drawings were interspersed with commentary by Chef Pellegrino.

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Having trained under some of the most critically acclaimed chefs and with a Michelin-starred restaurant under her belt, the culinary talent has accomplished more at 24 than many have in their entire careers.

Photography by Roberto Patella

Fashion by Allegra Benini

Normally, it would seem impossible to imagine that someone like Isabella Potí could conjure up any sort of New Year’s resolution. At 24, she has accomplished more than many do in their entire careers. She’s trained under several professional chefs, including Claude Bosi at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London, Martin Berasategui at his three-starred restaurant in Lasarte-Oria, Spain, and Paco Torreblanca, who is considered the father of modern pastry. She was named one of Europe’s most outstanding emerging chefs on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2017, and she appeared as a celebrity guest judge on MasterChef Italia that same year. And—perhaps her greatest professional accomplishment—her ambitious contemporary restaurant Bros’, which she co-owns with boyfriend Floriano Pellegrino in Lecce, Italy, received a Michelin star in 2018.

Yet Potí still has goals, and refreshingly, none of them are centered on a soufflé. “I really would like to learn as much as I can about rugby,” she says. “I would like to grow personally. I’m training already with our local team.”

Potí, who looks like she would be as comfortable on a runway as she is in a kitchen, has taken quickly to the fastest growing women’s team sport (both in Europe and in the United States), and with reason. “I knew something about it because my boyfriend played for 11 years. It’s a little bit different than soccer; I prefer it,” she offers. Her main objectives, besides the obvious of just elevating her own skill, are to be a better teammate and leader on the field.

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Bros’ – Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Poti – owner-chef of Bros’, Floriano Pellegrino, returned to Italy in 2015 to open his own restaurant after working alongside some of the world’s most renowned and prestigious chefs like Martin Berasategui. In January 2018, he was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of successful personalities. Bros’ is located in Lecce, Puglia, Italy. Food, culture, history of nutrition, survival of humanity on the planet, resourcefulness, quality of life, peace, home and Mediterranean culture are the themes that Floriano tries to convey and include in the dishes that he designs every day with Isabella Potì, his partner (half Polish and half Italian) in life and projects.

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