To make a splash in the culinary world, a chef must do more than follow a Menu or do what is expected. No one transcends these boundaries more than Carla Pellegrino, also known on her website as Chef Carla.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Pellegrino learned to cook in the second-generation Italian kitchen of her mother. Cooking led naturally to Carla’s love of helping her family prepare food for their catering business. Schooled, in this way, she learned how to make traditional Brazilian, Italian and Portuguese cuisine. By 16, the family shifted lifestyles and moved to Liguria, Italia, where a small family store replaced the catering business. Here, Carla gave cooking demonstrations for whoever wished to attend and would go on to found myriad Bratalian Restaurants, a combination of Brazilian and Italian cuisine.
A long journey in cooking led her far from either of her exotic home cities before she returned to Rio de Janeiro to open her Baldoria Restaurant, in New York’s theater district, where she earned a reputation in creative excellence. An education at the French Culinary Institute in New York, where 13 years ago, she graduated cum laude.
By 2011, a decade later, Pellegrino had already settled on combining Brazilian and Italian cuisine with distinctive flair and creative innovation. These attributes carried her into the place of offering a new venue, Bratalian Neopolitan Cantina. Naples, Italy, one of the renowned places in the world for excellent cuisine combined with her Rio de Janeiro roots to catapult her to award-winning status and reviews in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s “Best of Las Vegas, 2012” and “Best of Henderson, 2011-2012.” Pellegrino also went on to host and display at the James Beard House, a prestigious stop for world-renowned chefs.
It is, perhaps, a stop in Las Vegas at the Rao’s Las Vegas, her venue there that she opened in 2006, that has sealed her success. It was there that she began playing with the dazzling array of combinations with straight Italian recipes, Recipes & cooking tips, to blast beyond pasta and into a combination of Brazilian and Italian approaches and influences. An emphasis on fresh and original met her need for constant consistent results, and a new flair was unveiled and achieved.
“As a chef, I am conscious of cooking healthy food while making sure that I keep Italian cuisine authentic. Italian food is not only about pasta, cheese and heavy cream; authentic Italian cuisine is based upon fresh ingredients made from scratch, lots of seafood, grilled chops, oven-roasted fishes and vegetables cooked in every flavorful way possible,” Pellegrino says on her website, http://www.chefcarlapellegrino.com.
I’ll be heading to Miami for 10 months in February to open a new place. It’s a chance to do a fine dining establishment, and I am excited about it,” she tells the Las Vegas Sun.
Article written by Julia Santander