Meet Andrea Fraquelli

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea Fraquelli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrea, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

As with questions so profound, many factors were involved in me finally realizing that hospitality and restaurants were my calling. Ultimately, I come from a line of restaurateurs, my grandfather was a hugely successful immigrant and a co-founder of many restaurants. My father inherited my grandfather’s restaurants, so my first memories are rooted in that world. Growing up, most of the family conversations revolved around restaurants, and by the time I was 14 or 15, I was already spending my school holidays working in restaurants. However, my first love was soccer, and I dreamed of being a professional player before a restaurateur. As it turned out, the football career never quite took off. But after graduating from university and spending time working in restaurants in Paris along the way, I realized there was a familiar sense of camaraderie in the restaurant world. The teamwork, the energy, the shared goals—it all reminded me of what I loved most about team sports. That team spirit and atmosphere, combined with my love for hosting and entertaining people, triggered a passion in me that has continued since then. For me it’s about the people, making them happy, fulfilled, and creating special moments in their lives for both my colleagues and my customers. Working in restaurants gives you the unique opportunity to be the highlight of someone’s day, every single day. It’s a true privilege and one of the greatest joys of the job.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a restaurateur. I recently relocated to Miami with my family and joined forces with my two best friends, Ignacio Lopez Mancisidor and Mattia Cicognani, to create a new vision for restaurants. A group of restaurants with the courage to focus on just one or two exceptional dishes, offering guests a nostalgic glimpse into a bygone era—where dining out was both affordable and luxurious in equal measure. It’s incredibly exciting to be sharing our most talented and passionate team—many of whom have journeyed with us from Italy and London—along with our cherished recipes and the best chef in the world, as we step into a new market and country. Our first restaurant, Cotoletta, has been an incredibly fulfilling venture. Just six months in, it’s already exceeding our hopes—bringing a refreshingly simple, heartfelt, and value-driven dining experience to the people of Miami. In a month’s time, our second creation will take life in Little River, and we have more surprises and fabulous food to share with this most vibrant of cities. All our decisions are made through the lens of creating relationships and bringing humanity into hospitality. Our restaurants are always the places that we would choose to eat and work in ourselves, in that sense it’s as authentic as it gets. We simply would never serve nor do anything we wouldn’t want to experience as guests.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three qualities I’ve found to help me the most are my ability to forget, my boundless optimism, and my perseverance. I have found that by loving what I do and maintaining a childish enthusiasm, I am less easily dissuaded from doing what I want, or what I feel to be right. I think to be an entrepreneur it is vital to embrace mistakes and quickly move on to the next attempt. People who think too much about the past or change their guiding principles due to bad experiences will struggle. One of my all-time favorite quotes that I often remind myself of, is from the great Winston Churchill: “Success is the ability to move from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I have to say I often think like this, sometimes using times shorter than a decade ahead of me as the end point. The fact is I would do exactly what I’m doing now with the same intensity and enthusiasm, and with the same plan and people by my side. I create teams and restaurants through the prism of who I’d most enjoy spending long days with, and where I can best express my passions. I am okay with not pleasing everyone, and I learned at a young age that by staying true to that approach, you give yourself the best chance of pleasing only the people that support you and your enterprise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cotolettamiami.com/

Image Credits

Cotoletta