Francesco Allegro, Chef from Apullia living and working in Los Angeles.
I only lived in Apullia for 2.5 months when I was 25 but it was a winter that changed my life. I say I left a piece of my soul there when I left.Ever since, any time I meet an Apullian my heart instantly swells with warmth, familiarity and nostalgia. It was no different when I met Francesco, and it was one of the things that drew me back to collaborate with him as the new Capri Club (LA’s new aperitivo-inspired bar where Francesco was the new head chef) was opening in LA the summer before I left.
I had offered to photograph the menu so Francesco told me to come by the day the bar was closed while he was organizing the kitchen. As the hospitality industry goes, nothing goes as planned, and since he didn’t have all the ingredients prepared for a menu shoot, instead what ensued was simply a really fun and silly time playing with food and talking about how much we missed Italy. The photos and our conversations turned into a profile piece I wrote, a project I loved putting together.
Since then Francesco’s life and work have transformed in many ways, so this profile remains a beautiful time capsule for that moment in time. Maybe next time I’m back in LA we’ll do chapter 2!
Chef Francesco Allegro’s Prep day at Capri club
June 2022
“When I met Francesco Allegro for the first time in 2021, he was a Starchefs Rising Star nominee and I was on assignment to take photos of one of his pasta dishes at Rossoblu in Downtown LA. He was the resident fresh pasta artisan at the Bologna-inspired restaurant and was starting to attract some acclaim. It was still the part of the pandemic where we were masked and socially confused, but we still managed to sneak in some small talk between shots. I found out that he was from a small city in Puglia, the region in the South of Italy where I had lived for a winter, and he made music in his free time outside the kitchen. After my shoot, I grabbed a couple of bites of the incredibly delicious and aromatic culurgiones di arso he had made and headed out with so many questions……
(read the rest of the full profile piece that I wrote on Francesco in June 2022 is below! )
bon apetito!!
