Photograph by Martha Williams
“Why was I not cooking the food I eat at home, you know what I mean?” Pat Pascarella asks as he lounges on a couch in an Ernest Hemingway–themed speakeasy, part of his Italian American concept, Rosso. He speaks of his new restaurant (located near the corner of 10th Street and Virginia Avenue) with the same bullishness of Papa. “I tried doing fancy, trendy dishes for Instagram,” he says. “Now I’m back to the food I want to eat.”
His impenitent tone is in many ways earned. In the past eight years, Pascarella has built one of the more distinctive restaurant groups in Atlanta. At its height in 2024, Porchetta Group (with partner Brian Ferris) comprised The White Bull, three Grana locations, Bastone, and Alici. But the latter two have since closed due to slow traffic.
“I needed to adapt,” he says. “I wanted a neighborhood spot for families, like my own, to go and be treated like family.” The result is Rosso, which he’s calling an “old-school red-sauce joint.” The decor fits the cliches, with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and a portrait of Frank Sinatra on the wall. The menu is a departure from the regional authentic Italian cuisines he once served at Alici and Bastone and still offers at Grana; Rosso features modestly priced Italian American hits made with high-end techniques, as seen in such dishes as blanched and sauteed broccoli rabe.
“My cousin tried the menu and goes, This makes me miss nonna’s lasagna,” Pascarella says. “I was like, This is the exact lasagna nonna made.”
Pascarella was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to a family of immigrants from Naples. He grew up learning to cook the rustic bread stews of la cucina povera (the poor farmer’s cuisine of Southern Italy, made with stale bread and vegetables) from his mother and grandmother. “There isn’t chicken Parm in Italy,” he says. “It wasn’t until I was working in restaurants that we knew a mozzarella stick existed.”
He got his first restaurant job at 14, working as a line cook at Bella Luna, a casual Italian American restaurant by chef Corey Falcone in Stamford. It was there he learned how to fry calamari, stuff and bake eggplant rollatini, and sear a flounder piccata, all of which appear on Rosso’s menu.
Once he graduated high school, Pascarella left to work in fine dining in New York City, where he attended The French Culinary Institute. After interning under high-profile chefs there, he returned to Connecticut to work under his mentor Falcone at Bella Luna again. Pascarella took his own leap as a restarateur by opening a take-out pizza place, Pizzeria Rosso. Bar Sugo followed, an upscale Italian restaurant that put him on the map.
Pascarella moved to Atlanta in 2017 and replicated Bar Sugo’s success with The White Bull, a seasonal-focused Italian eatery he started in 2018 in Decatur. In 2020, he opened Grana, a Southern Italian restaurant in Piedmont Heights. Grana quickly expanded to Dunwoody and Roswell, where Pascarella lives with his wife, son, and daughter. Then, in 2022, he opened Bastone on the Westside, which was inspired by his grandfather and served Northern Italian cuisine, and Alici, an Amalfi Coast–style oyster bar. “It hurt that they both didn’t take off,” he says. “I felt like I did my family dirty.”
With Rosso, Pascarella refreshes the former Alici space, hoping to welcome the families of Virginia-Highland and Midtown. Outside, the patio includes a small play area for kids. Inside, the dining room features dark curtains and fewer tables for intimacy. Pascarella also updated the adjacent Bar Pilar, the Hemingway speakeasy, with its own luxe menu of Wagyu burgers, oysters, and caviar bumps.
At Rosso, the menu includes a fist-sized meatball for $8.95 using a recipe from Pascarella’s nonna (grandmother), and the Thursday lasagna special ($25.95) also comes from her. Much of the rest rings Italian American true, with a thick mozzarella stick and calamari among the starters and pastas such as mafalde scampi, fusilloni Bolognese, and cavatelli to pair with chicken francese, veal marsala, and steak alla Diane.
For some dishes, there are small notes on the menu that read like Pascarella’s diary. A scribble under the chicken scarpiello (thick, seared chicken breast with sausage, onions, and hot cherry peppers in a lemon broth) claims, By far the best chicken dish I’ve ever had. And what does the menu have to say about the chicken alla vodka (crispy chicken cutlet with spicy vodka sauce, pesto, and cold burrata)? YES cold burrata. NO we won’t warm it up! f*ck around and find out.
The menu is unapologetic, and for Pascarella, that’s the intention behind the dishes at Rosso. “I needed to pivot and make my food more accessible,” he says. “And if that’s with a smack-you-in-the-face tomato sauce that makes you smell like garlic three days later, that’s what I want.”
This article appears in our May 2026 issue.
