Italian restaurants in Brooklyn begin to blend together after a while. There are bountiful options for bowls of pasta and salads with mozzarella di bufala. If you zoom in, though, you’ll see that there are subtle, and important, differences between the spots on one corner versus the other. Flora in Park Slope sets itself apart in its uncompromising commitment to the flavors of Cilento, a town in Campania near the Amalfi Coast. When owners Emiliano and Rossella Cammardella opened Flora six years ago, they brushed off the confused looks and occasional blatant exits from patrons and stuck to their guns. It paid off, with recognition from the Michelin Guide and, perhaps most impressively, six years of existence in New York City. 

Tell me about yourselves and how you came to start Flora. 

Emiliano: We moved to New York City in 2012. I was working in architecture, and Rossella was a sociology student in the city. At the end of our visa, we had to decide what to do, and we decided to open a restaurant because we felt that we could do something good for the New York City food industry. We named it Flora after my mother. When she would cook for us, I would always joke with her that I would one day open a restaurant and name it after her. She said, “Yeah, sure, sure,” and we actually did it. 

Has Flora, the namesake, been here?

Emiliano: Yes, she just left last week after visiting for the first time after all these years! She was so excited. She stepped in and cried for 30 minutes. 

How did your previous careers and backgrounds in architecture and sociology inform the restaurant? 

Rossella: He was taking care of all of the design of the restaurant. We did everything ourselves. We started with nothing. This place was a mess. It was just garbage, everywhere. 

Emiliano: We made all the drawings with a registered architect, but we did all of the design and planning work. 

Rossella: So much of sociology is about food. This restaurant is based on our cuisine and culture. We don’t have experience as chefs. We just wanted to bring something here that we hadn’t seen before. Everything is authentic because we don’t know how to do anything other than what we know. 

Emiliano: We’ve seen that, in the past couple of years, in the neighborhood and on social media, everyone is using authentic, high-end, imported products. But, six years ago when we started — which seems like 200 years ago — there was not as much attention to details and quality of the products in the majority of places. At the time, we were bringing something new. It’s not really new, because the dishes are basic, but the concept of being simple and quality was new then. 

When we opened, people would look at the menu and say, “This isn’t the type of Italian restaurant that we’re used to.” A lot of people left. We could have adapted to make more money, but we stuck it out and figured that if it didn’t work out, we’d just leave it. Here we are. 

In addition to the food, the wine list is also a bit different than what we might get at many other Italian restaurants. What’s unique about it?

Emiliano: All of the wines are from Campania, our home region in the south of Italy. 90% is from the Cilento area, where we are from, south of the Amalfi Coast. It’s an area between the shores and mountains and volcanoes. It makes the ingredients and recipes and especially the wines, very particular. There’s a wide variety of soil types, including volcanic, which makes for a super unique wine. Everyone knows Chianti and Barrolo and the other main, excellent, wines of Italy. We want to present, with our food, the best matched wines from our region. We chose to be like an embassy of the Cilento region in Brooklyn. 

It seems like you were right not to worry about the people who came in at the beginning and walked out because they were unfamiliar with your food. Where are your customers coming from now?

Rossella: Of course, we have a lot of people coming from the neighborhood. After last year, we were on the Michelin Guide, so after that, we had a lot more people coming from everywhere. 

Flora is a gratuity-free restaurant, which is pretty rare here in the US and pretty topical, too, with the growing discussion around tipping. What inspired this decision and what has its effect been?

Emiliano: It’s well-received by customers because they don’t have to think or do calculations. They just sign and say “thank you.” We feel that it’s a good thing for everyone. There’s no competition between the staff. Everyone knows that they will get a good wage. We think that a good experience for a customer extends from the back of the kitchen until they say goodbye. If you have a dirty plate, it means that the dishwasher didn’t do a good job. If you have a clean plate, it means they did a good job, and they deserve a tip, just like the waiter does. 

On our side, it’s a little tricky because sometimes people don’t read that tip is included, so it seems a little higher – even though it’s not that high. Sometimes they will get scared off from this. A lot of people leave a tip anyway because they feel like they had a great experience. 

What is coming up in the future for Flora?

Emiliano: Last year was a really tough year, but it was great because we got our Bib Gourmand rating in the Michelin Guide. Since last year, we’ve been thinking about expanding to another location. It’s very hard, so we postpone it all the time. But we would love to do a spinoff of Flora because we think this city deserves it.