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FABIO PERRONEEAT THE WOR LD
ing beaches. “They want comfort
food, lots of food, and food that’s
cheap.” Floriano and 22-year-old
Giovanni trained separately in far-
flung fine-dining destinations like
Noma in Copenhagen, Lasarte-Oria
and Mugaritz in the Basque region,
and Yamamoto in Tokyo. Impatient
w ith the slow pace of change and their
hometown’s lack of creativity, the pair
returned to open their restaurant a
year and a half ago.
“Cicorie—it’s all around us and
in season right now,” Floriano says
on an a f ternoon forag ing trip in the
nearby countryside of Scorrano, a
sparse, rural town minutes from the
bottommost coast of Puglia. “But theIn Lecce, a singular Italian city of
whitewashed dwellings, Baroque architecture, and palm
trees near the southern tip of Italy’s heel, most restaurants
have served the region’s comfort food for centuries—peasant
dishes like pezzetti di cavallo al sugo, a stew of slow-braised
horse meat in sweet tomato sauce, and fava e cicorie, a homey
dried fava mush served with wilted, garlicky chicory leaves.
“People don’t like change in Lecce,” says 26-year-old
Floriano Pellegrino, one half of the sibling chef team at Bros’,
an ambitious modern Italian restaurant in a city that, until
recently, had catered mostly to tourists visiting the surround-Floriano (left) and
Giovanni (right)
Pellegrino came
back to their
sleepy hometown
in southern Italy
to open Bros’,
a high-concept
contemporary
Italian restaurant.Eating in the Heel
Change comes slowly to the southern Italian
town of Lecce. A pair of foraging
chef brothers are trying to change thatBY STACY ADIMANDO