Courtesy of David Thompson Architect
The Indigo Road restaurant group is opening its fourth restaurant in metro Atlanta and its second on the Westside. Led by Colletta executive chef Mike Perez, Donetto will serve Tuscan cuisine at 976 Brady Avenue across from Miller Union.
“I love Italy. We rent a house there every year,” says Indigo Road founder Steve Palmer. “Nothing says sharing food at a table more than Italian food. That’s the spirit: good friends getting together sharing.”
Unlike sister restaurant Colletta, Donetto will not have a pizza oven. Instead, it will focus on pasta and meat. “We wanted to step away from the more casual pizza and pasta. Think of it as a grown-up version of Colletta,” Palmer says.
Perez clarifies that the menus will not have any overlap. “I want to elevate what we do at Colletta with eight or nine pastas. I want to talk about the history of the pasta dishes and the folklore behind them. Bringing education to the table is a lot of fun,” he says.
He’ll use semolina-based dough and an in-house pasta extruder to create rigatoni, bucatini, agnolotti, and cappellacci. He’s considering smoked quail-stuffed pasta, smoked short rib agnolotti, seafood pasta with smoked roe, and mortadella-stuffed pasta. There will be steak Florentine, 45-day dry-aged ribeye, porchetta slow smoked on the rotisserie and finished on the grill, and grilled whole fish.
Photo by Mike Perez
A beverage director has not been selected yet, but the program will likely to include cocktails such as negroni on tap, Italian wines and beers, local beer, and amaro.
Perez is also working on a late-night menu featuring two-bite paninis made with steak and meatballs. Eventually, he says he wants to utilize the outdoor fire pit for cook-your-own items like skewered meat and Nutella s’mores.
Located above the Painted Duck (the Westside’s answer to the Painted Pin), Donetto will have a 50-seat patio, a large bar, and a stone walled interior decorated in slate gray and cherry walnut wood.
“It’s going to look unlike any restaurant we’ve ever done. It’s going to fit in with the aesthetic you see on the Westside—industrial warehouse,” Palmer says.
