For the Love of Puglia

Mirko Febbrile reconnects with his native roots with the opening of Fico, his new casual Italian restaurant 

-  Dudi Aureus

As an Italian, you could say that making people happy has always been ingrained in Mirko Febbrile’s DNA. So it is no surprise that the 31‑year‑old Puglian native—who is also, by his own admission, “crazy about drawing … and shoes”—ended up as a professional chef where he seeks to bring a smile to people’s faces through his food. His first “customer” was his younger brother; when Febbrile was eight, he would heat up his mum’s prepared food for them while his parents were at work. Eventually, he became interested in pastry and baking because, as he puts it, “it’s more scientific … I didn’t need to figure out if the food was too salty”. Moreover, he could easily look up recipes for cakes, cookies and pastries online, which he would whip up at home.

“I’d have missing ingredients at home,” he recalls with a chuckle, and being the precocious child that he was, he would bravely knock on his neighbours’ doors to ask for “flour, oranges, milk and so on”. The ingredients he borrowed kept adding up over time, so much so that his mum, who would be bombarded with questions on when she would return what they owed, told him: “If you want to be the best chef, you can make the best meal out of the ingredients we have in the fridge. Don’t go around and make me look like a fool.”