Bros’ restaurant now has its own Bros’ Rugby Club, which brings local players into the kitchen and the restaurant’s foreign interns and staff, sometimes apparently unwillingly, into the gym and onto the pitch.Īt 16, Mr. Pellegrino said that culinary dream helped him avoid the criminality that captured many of his friends, but so did the discipline he learned playing rugby. He insisted he would be “a chef with a chain of restaurants.” She told them that one would be a cop, the other a crook. His father “had problems with the law,” he said, and his mother prepared typical dishes like horse meat in the kitchen of the family farm and agritourism hotel, where he rode horses with his two little brothers.

Potì in nearby Scorrano, where he was born and raised and where the authorities recently disbanded city hall for its mafia infiltration. Even more than his Michelin star, that marks how far he has come. Pellegrino had unexpectedly emerged as the ultimate caricature of the self-obsessed haute cuisine chef. Misunderstood masterpiece or lousy meal, a richly deserved excoriation or hatchet job, what is clear is that Mr. “The attempts by the chefs of Bros’ to blame their clientele for the quality of the service received,” she wrote in an email, “is the antithesis of what makes a good restaurant.”

Informed of the accusation of rudeness, Ms. Pellegrino, adding that if the party had acted the same in a local trattoria, “they would have gotten a kick” in the behind. “They had a good time making fun of us,” said Mr. He mused about whether the premillennial age of the diners made them too old-fashioned for his food and said the privileged foreigners had no interest in his interpretation of Lecce’s traditional dishes, such as his rancid take on “strong ricotta.” Pellegrino can’t help harboring raw feelings about the review. “Maybe it’s going to expand their business, and then we are going to see 20 Bros’ around the world.”īut Mr. He said that the situation was potentially a “winner” for the restaurant. “They do excellent communication,” said Alessandro Borghese, an Italian celebrity chef who rates restaurants on one of his popular television shows, and who admired the couple’s entrepreneurialism, if not necessarily their brand of cooking. “If I’m able to do other things, why only cook?” A video for Bros’ summer 2021 menu came with an epilepsy warning. They have filmed videos for their menus as Adam and Eve, clad only in strategically placed leaves. They have promotional deals with sunglass companies, ice cream bars, their own rugby team and a clothing brand. But he does say “Hey, bro” to just about everyone, is inked with some questionable Bros-centric tattoos that some would regard as misogynistic and loves the F-word so much that he used it on the boxes of his Christmas panettones. While she is a polyglot, the chiseled Mr. Pellegrino noted) have attracted fashion magazines and collaborations with Nike. Potì’s culinary chops and cheek bones (“Isabella has this face,” Mr. Potì, who see themselves as avant-garde envoys of the flavors of their native Salento territory, and also happen to be tireless self-promoters and unabashed hustlers - the culinary equivalent of Italy’s reigning influencer couple, the tattooed rapper Fedez and the multimedia powerhouse Chiara Ferragni. The insight that both the critic and the criticized could benefit from a viral pan is less than extraordinary. The celebrity chef constellation is as much about television ratings and assorted synergies as it is substance, or sustenance. That publicity feeds the restaurant world is nothing new. “This is a big opportunity,” he said, adding that the review “only gave us publicity.” Following the suggestion of two American interns in the restaurant’s marketing department, the couple will soon launch a Let’s Make Out nonfungible token, or NFT, the blockchain-based collectible that is all the rage in the art world.

The casts, at 58 euros apiece, had sold out, but scores more were pre-ordered and their supplier rushed to keep up. Pellegrino said as another email from America ordering a cast of his mouth popped up on his phone. Pellegrino, 31, was also trying to make sense of what had happened as he stood with his celebrated head chef and girlfriend, Isabella Potì, 26, who is expecting their first child. On a recent afternoon at his minimalist restaurant, Mr.

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