Inside Venissa Chef Francesco Brutto’s Vegetable-Led Kitchen

What does one of the world’s best kitchens keep in its pantry? At Venissa, apparently, a very good lentil matters quite a lot.

For Scene Eats’ What’s Inside One of the World’s Best Kitchens, Francesco Brutto unpacked some of the ingredients behind the Michelin-starred Venetian restaurant while in Cairo for Cairo Food Week 2026, where he brought Venissa’s vegetable-led cooking into Mazeej Balad’s kitchen.

There were capers from Apulia, where Brutto is from, followed by lentils sourced from a producer—and friend—in Lazio. Then came two kinds of onions grown in Venissa’s own garden, one violet and one tiny, and a sauce built from an abundance of vegetables with a little Sichuan pepper.

The collection is modest by the usual grammar of fine dining, but that is rather the point. At Venissa, where Brutto cooks alongside Chiara Pavan, vegetables aren't supporting characters arranged around an expensive centrepiece. “It’s the main ingredient of our kind of kitchen, of our style of cuisine,” he explained.

That philosophy means sourcing can become intensely personal: something grown in the restaurant’s garden, something supplied by a friend, something carried from another Italian region. And while the ingredients Brutto brought to Cairo travelled from Apulia, Lazio and Venice, together they offered a miniature map of the Italian pantry he wants his cooking to represent.

“We always try to use as many vegetables as possible,” Brutto said. “It’s very important for us to showcase what is the most beautiful product of Italy.”