Figlio Bastardo

The name “Figlio Bastardo,” translating to “Bastard Son,” encapsulates the deli’s essence: A maverick offspring of Italian culinary heritage. This deli pays homage to its rich heritage while daringly defying its confines. We envisioned a space where classic Italian dishes are reimagined with unexpected twists, think porchetta infused with medicinal mushrooms or panini featuring saffron-infused ricotta and crunchy nori.

Our mission was to craft a brand that embodies this rebellious spirit, seamlessly blending time-honoured traditions with audacious innovation.

Scope

Who is Figlio Bastardo?

Figlio Bastardo is a love letter to the rule-breakers of Italian cuisine. A rebellious altar to tradition, not confined by it, but inspired to twist it.

Here, carbs ascend to a sacred status. The kitchen serves as the pulpit. And every dish delivers a sermon of bold, irreverent flavour. Designed to be shared, debated, and devoured with unrestrained joy, our food isn’t served with pretence: just passion, poured long-table style, where strangers become famiglia over spilled wine and stories.

This is old-world heritage with a new-world attitude. 100% classic, 100% unexpected. Where mortadella meets lion’s mane, and ricotta gets hit with a dose of saffron and seaweed. It’s Italian, reimagined. Divine indulgence with a side of mischief. Figlio Bastardo is where the sacred meets the sinful, and the ritual of real food is reborn in the chaos of community. Pull up a chair, pour some wine, and prepare to be converted.

Our approach

In conceiving Figlio Bastardo, we built a living, breathing altar to flavour. A place where every detail, from the menu to the merch, pulses with the same wild energy as the space itself. From the outset, we knew Figlio Bastardo had to be about more than just food. And so, we forged it from a feeling: The clatter of plates, the crescendo of conversation, the kind of long-table chaos where strangers become famiglia and no one leaves with clean hands or an empty stomach.

Our approach centred around communion. Not the bread-and-wine kind (though there’s plenty of both), but the kind where food becomes the language and connection is the ritual. We knew the branding had to carry that same sense of shared reverence and rowdiness, whether you’re grabbing a porchetta panino to go, or picking up a bottle of Olio Santo for your pantry at home.

Every touchpoint was designed to echo the atmosphere: bold type that shouts across a crowded room, cheeky messaging that makes you feel like you’ve just been let in on a delicious secret, and packaging that brings a little of the dining room’s irreverent charm into your own kitchen.

Figlio Bastardo is a sensory, sacred, slightly unhinged world where tradition is honoured, rules are bent, and food is the great unifier. Our M.O as the brand’s Front of House, was to stir the sauce, pour the wine, and set the table for something unforgettable.

Brand messaging and voice

From the very first spark, we were entrusted with more than branding. We conceived the entire venture concept, from naming the bastard son himself to building a world that could carry his legacy.

Figlio Bastardo needed a voice as big, bold, and blasphemous as the food. One that merged the sacred with the profane, holding a mortadella sandwich in one hand and a gospel in the other. So we wrote the doctrine. Not just copy, but scripture. We built a verbal identity that worships carbs, exalts chaos, and revels in the beauty of breaking tradition.

Lines like “the kitchen is our pulpit and every dish a devotion” aren’t just punchlines, they’re philosophy. The tone walks the line between sacred and sinful, reverent and rogue, inviting patrons to gather, feast, and partake in something bigger than a meal.

This is a brand that speaks in rituals and ruckus. Long-table lunches become weekly sacraments. Stories are swapped like wine, and every crumb is a confession. The voice isn’t just playful, it’s possessed. Designed to ignite appetite and allegiance in equal measure.

At Figlio Bastardo, the food talks loud. And now, the brand does too.

The brand in the making

Figlio Bastardo deserved a brand identity that’s as loud, layered, and delightfully unhinged as the dishes it champions. Drawing on Catholic kitsch, alimentari nostalgia, and a whole lot of culinary chaos, this is visual storytelling that kicks in the kitchen door, flour flying.

The logotypes walk the tightrope between retro signage and punk zine: playful, potent, and purposefully imperfect. Typography is gutsy and unpretentious, like your loudest cousin at the family table. Colour leads with deep basil greens, vino reds, and sacramental golds: shades pulled straight from stained glass and sauce-stained napkins.

Across the system, everything is a little too much. And that’s exactly the point. We used cheeky altar-boy illustrations, communion-style wine labels, and deli packaging that looks like it’s been passed down through three generations and a food fight. It’s tradition with tomato on its collar.

Photography direction leans raw and raucous with sticky fingers, oil-dripped plates, blurred hands mid-serve. It’s not curated, it’s captured. The chaos of the shared table, the holy mess of a good time.

From dish names to sauce bottles, every touchpoint plays with the sacred and profane. Think Blood of the Vines red wine, Forgive Me Father dessert platters, and The Last Supper Club long-table feasts. This is a full-blown sensory revival.

Figlio Bastardo’s brand doesn’t just tell you what it is. It makes you feel it. Loud. Joyful. Hungry. Converted.

The end result

Figlio Bastardo is a culinary uprising dressed in mortadella and mischief. A brand that turned tradition on its head and served it with a side of chaos, communion, and chilli oil.

With an identity as loud as the lunch crowd and visuals that feel like stolen pages from a holy book rewritten in sauce, this is branding with bite. From the type to the table settings, the signage to the sauces, everything works in unison to glorify good food and sacrilegious flavour.

Figlio Bastardo is a world where porchetta gets the adaptogenic treatment, long lunches are weekly rituals, and storytelling is as essential as seasoning. It now stands as proof that heritage doesn’t have to be handled with white gloves. It can be held with sauce-covered hands, shared across the table, and reinvented with every rebellious bite.

Welcome to the church of culinary chaos. Come hungry, leave converted.