You can imagine my surprise when my friends from Brescia (in Lombardy in northern Italy, about an hour and a half east of Milan) called me to tell me a month or so ago that Joe Bastianich had opened a restaurant there.

It’s called Artemis Persian Tapas Bar and as the restaurant’s site says, “è il nuovo progetto di Joe Bastianich con un concept mai visto prima” (“it’s Joe Bastianich’s new project, with a concept never before seen”).

None of my friends have been there yet. But there has been at least one sighting of Joe, an avid guitar player, busking in the streets of the city (I doubt he’s got a tip hat out but in my day, when you played in the street, that’s what it was called). A friend shared a video of him singing and playing Prince’s “Purple Rain,” unaccompanied, with just him on guitar and vocals.

Joe is a major television star in Italy and he’s even had his own line of McDonald’s sandwiches there. I’ve heard that he spends a great deal of time in Milan these days.

Why open a restaurant in Brescia? I have no idea. What I do know that Brescia has a even more vibrant nightlife than it did before the lockdowns in 2020. Because of my deep ties to the city, forged over the many years I’ve been hanging out there, I’ve seen its transformation from an industrial and university town to a top tourist destination. Especially over the last two years, its historic center and incredible campus of Roman ruins (the largest outside of Rome) have become a favorite destination for European tourists. I don’t see a ton of Americans there. But I imagine that’s beginning to change as well.

It used to be that the Brescia food scene was populated by old school trattorias and the occasional (and exceptionally delicious) hamburger and beer joint. Today, there are tons of sushi and poke restaurants, a handful of American-themed casual eateries, and even an extremely popular Indian restaurant. The city’s population has also diversified quite a bit since I started spending time there in 2011. It’s really magical. They even have a left-leaning mayor, my friend Laura Castelletti. That’s unusual for Lombardy where most tend to the hard right. They call it the “Stalingrad” of Italy!

Check it out next time your in Italy.

That’s the city’s famous Piazza della Loggia in the image below, snapped just last week.