Now Shenzhen | October 24, 2022
Living in Shenzhen recently has left us numb to bar & restaurant closures; it seems as though every other week we’re hearing of yet another departure from the city’s food and drink scene, and for us personally, it’s become a daily chore listening to worried venue owners frantically scrambling for help – and we don’t mean “chore” in the sense that we don’t want to know, or help, but it’s just so depressingly bleak for so many people right now, with beloved businesses, and entire livelihoods being decimated right in front of our eyes.
One restaurant we didn’t expect to be hearing about, however, was Braceria Pugliese. But last night we saw an Instagram post that rocked us, and sent shock waves through Shenzhen F&B…
If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know that we refrain from using definitive adjectives like “best” when referring to singularities – we’ve said it a thousand times, it’s lazy writing, and loses all meaning and value when the next best thing comes along, and you describe that as “the best”, too – but with Braceria Pugliese, you’d be hard tried to find someone who doesn’t hold them in their personal list of favourite restaurants in the city. Not just of Italian restaurants, either.
Us personally, we’ve only ever been a handful of times, most notably for an incredible Birthday dinner, but we’d walk past regularly when grabbing a pint at Keg Room (RIP), and the queue for a table would always be out the door no matter what time of the evening it was, which makes the news of the near 2-decade old (in some form) restaurant closing, even more shocking.
We don’t know their reasons and we don’t want to speculate; Angelo is one of few guys in Shenzhen F&B that we don’t know personally, but it could be any number of things given the circumstances. It could be anything from the constant covid lockdowns, with ShuiWei being hit harder and more consistently than most areas, the business not doing as great as perceived from our small snippets and judgments walking by, or after nearly 20 years, he might just want a fresh start. All we can say with any certainty is that Braceria Pugliese closed last night in ShuiWei, and that we wish Angelo all the best in whatever he does next!
You can still enjoy a night at Braceria Pugliese, though, as the team opened a second (now, only) location in OCT earlier this year (Braceria Pugliese (侨城一号广场店)), and whilst we cannot speak for the food – we haven’t yet checked it out – or their future without Angelo, we do know that their service and hospitality will remain outstanding, with Maxie managing the team, and bringing the same charm you’ve come to love from ShuiWei.
ARTICLE FROM: EAT Shenzhen