It marked the end of an era when chef Luciano DelSignore announced the closing of Bacco, the Southfield mainstay he'd opened more than 20 years ago.
DelSignore said he closed the Italian restaurant to allocate
his time to exciting new projects. In June, more than two years after the announcement, DelSignore opened e Fiori in Birmingham, an Italian restaurant that greets diners with an enchanting florist at its foyer. True to DelSignore’s promise, e Fiori is at once exciting and new.
E Fiori is layered, an amalgamation of femininity, European charm, Birmingham cachet and the polish of Italian leather.
It has the allure of a European haunt, tucked into The Willits, a grand building with its stone facade tracing the curve of the Rouge River. A stunning display of florals greets diners at the entry vestibule. Gorgeous long-stem gladioluses burst with coral and magenta ruffles that cascade over clusters of dusty pink and white roses, pairs of dahlias in short glass vases and verdant ruscus. The room is sprayed with foliage like an indoor garden. The smell of leaves and petals hang in the air like dew, crossing paths with fragrance notes from lotions and candles scented with tomato and bergamot.
The event designer Darin Lenhardt has fashioned the space after the floral shops of DelSignore’s travels throughout Europe. Soon, the foyer will be Lenhardt’s lair, a place for diners and passersby alike to purchase single bouquets or arrangements for events, and where the designer will assemble flowers that will add interest to the restaurant's tabletops and bathroom sinks.
Before or after dinner, you can purchase flowers or home goods, books or greeting cards, gardening tools or bars of soap. It's a seductive way of luring more cash out of the guest's wallet.
At night, the serenity of the flower shop crashes into the joyful bedlam of a lively dining room. Here, the chef trades ethereality and whimsy for blistering hot plates of broiled crustaceans, twirls of pasta that exhale puffs of steam and base notes that thump against your diaphragm.
Everything here is well done — that's to say, precise in flavor ― like a trio of broiled prawns, split down the center and flat, savasana style, supple and stinging with Calabrian chili and glossed in basil, olive oil and the salt of the sea. Or cappellini infused with lemon that starts with a whisper and gently builds to a tarte plateau.
Reuniting with DelSignore is Ben Robison, a former Bacco pastry chef and now head of pastry at e Fiori. Robison coaxes the potential out of the mundane, animating cheesecake with goat's milk until it's as smooth as satin, and spongy hunks of basil cake as dark as a cloudy night sky and as evocative of the herb as culinarily possible.
E Fiori’s from-scratch seasonal nature is a pleasant contrast to the red sauce joints in metro Detroit, where menus are templated. Here, pastas are made in house and dishes, like the flower arrangements upfront, rotate with the seasons. A salad of watermelon chopped into cubes like blocks of pink ice will soon phase into bowls of root vegetables. Even the bread — housemade with fully fermented dough and sans commercial yeast — will see some seasonal changes. The light and airy Pugliese loaf is a pride point for DelSignore, who carefully formulated the recipe over the course of six months.
The extent of DelSignore’s ambition to cultivate a scratch kitchen is impressive. Housemade limoncello, a rarity for the region, hits tables at e Fiori with the clink of a fallen bracelet. A dainty ribbed flute is filled with the yellow elixir, which is sous vide for eight hours overnight, for a puckering kick to an unanticipating palate.
In other regards, a few items here are well done — that's to say, overcooked within an inch of off-putting. A sausage starter, impressively handmade and stuffed daily in the kitchen, has been rendered void of its own fat, and lacks the tenderness required to cut it with the table knife with which it was served. Still, soft pickled onions, melted Gorgonzola and crisp fennel round out the dish with extraordinary texture and flavor.
Chilled lobster or broiled langoustines are cooked just long enough to offer a reasonable chew. But on a recent visit, the meat seemed nearly ready to turn from shellfish into a savory mousse.
The pandemic, DelSignore admits, contributed to Bacco's demise. The thoroughfare-side restaurant, a destination for metro Detroit's white-collar crowd, lost its luster when the workforce became overrun with remote culture. Soon, an absent lunch crowd drew an emptier dining room.
More promising, Birmingham's commercial corridor and growing business district lends new opportunities for a bustling lunch crowd at e Fiori.
A bright dining area off of the main dining room where I sat on a Saturday night gives the impression that you might be seated in a well-designed Birmingham home, a velvet sage couch and a decorative rug to your right, a gallery wall of abstract and contemporary art straight ahead. The room is modern and clean, homey, if your home is a new build or on any level of a luxury suburban high-rise.
At some points of a quiet lunch, it felt as if I might be intruding on a meeting as managers walked potential customers through future events, plotting placements for floral arrangements or talking through scenarios like where a musician might perform.
But it's understandable. E Fiori, after all, can be anything — a flower shop, an events space, a gift shop, a restaurant for a quiet lunch or an upbeat dinner. Soon, DelSignore says, the restaurant’s red room, sectioned off with heavy curtains, will become a space for caviar and stuzzichini — the Italian version of a tapas lounge for caviar and small plates.
As the seasons evolve, so too will the menu, the florals and the overall possibilities for your experience at e Fiori.
E Fiori, 115 Willits St., Birmingham. 248-744-4000; efioribirmingham.com
Contact Detroit Free Press Dining and Restaurant Critic Lyndsay C. Green at: LCGreen@freepress.com. Follow @LadyLuff on Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for extras and insider scoops on Detroit-area dining.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: A new Italian restaurant from a veteran chef blossoms in Birmingham
