Chef Luciano DelSignore opens e Fiori, Birmingham’s Italian bottega with house pastas

e Fiori did not open like a normal restaurant. Luciano DelSignore’s new downtown Birmingham project pairs an Italian dining room with a European-style floral and gift shop at 115 Willits Street, turning the former Mediterranean space into a bottega that is meant to be browsed as much as it is eaten in. The restaurant took reservations as it opened Wednesday, June 17, with a live reservation line at (248) 744-4000.

For pasta people, the pitch is straightforward: the spectacle only works if the food pulls its weight. DelSignore is leaning on house pastas, heritage sourdough breads made daily, whole-fish preparations and wood-fired dishes drawn from different parts of Italy. He has said the menu will pull from Italy’s 20 regions, which is the right kind of ambition for a room that wants to be judged on return visits, not one quick look.

That broader experience is built into the floor plan. Darin Lenhardt leads the Shoppe at e Fiori, where the retail side includes European-style cut stems, seasonal bouquets, vases, botanicals, hand-embroidered linens, candles and decorative objects. The venue is being described as the first of its kind in Michigan and Birmingham’s first bottega-style concept, a label that makes more sense once you see how tightly the dining room, bar and retail area are tied together. Nicole Antakli DelSignore is also part of the venture under Abruzzese Hospitality.

DelSignore brings real weight to the opening. He is a three-time James Beard Award nominee and spent more than 20 years running Bacco Ristorante, which closed in 2024. Birmingham city commissioners approved the ownership transfer for the space on May 19, 2025, and the address has already moved through multiple restaurant identities, first Màre Mediterranean and later Sprazzo before becoming e Fiori.

The size and seating plan show how the project is being set up to do more than dinner service. One local report put indoor seating at 170, down from 190, while another said the venue could seat close to 200 guests and expand to about 250 for private events. That kind of flexibility fits the concept: a place with handmade pasta at the center, but enough design and retail theater around it to make the whole evening feel like part of the product. At e Fiori, the real test is whether the flowers frame the meal or the meal justifies the flowers.