An exciting new Italian wine bar is currently gearing up to open in Hells Kitchen later this year.
Via Toscana is a brand new restaurant concept from chef and owner Andrea Della Pina. Born in Tuscany, Della Pina grew up watching his father preparing traditional Italian dishes and inherited his family’s passion for cooking. Endeavoring to master the fine techniques he needed in order to bring his vision to life, Della Pina attended the prestigious Institute of Alberghiero Marina di Massa to complete his culinary education and began working at upscale restaurants across the region.
After years of culinary success in Italy, Della Pina moved to New York, where he met Chef Giacomo Alaio, the co-owner of New York’s incredibly popular Italian restaurant Patrizia’s. With locations all across the tri-state area, Patrizia’s began in the Bronx in 1991, eventually expanding to ten different restaurants across the region as word of the restaurant’s excellence continued to spread. In 2011, Della Pina began working at Patrizia’s Stamford outpost and began familiarizing himself with the restaurant’s more uniquely American take on Italian cuisine. Most recently, Della Pina served as Executive Chef at the Patrizia’s in Red Bank, where he continued to innovate with dynamic new takes on the traditional dishes of his youth.
Now, Della Pina is getting ready to launch a brand new concept of his own design in Hells Kitchen. He has just acquired the lease for a new restaurant at 344 West 52nd Street, between ninth and tenth avenues, where he intends to launch a new wine bar called Via Toscana. The space was formerly home to a popular Swiss-Austrian restaurant called Mont Blanc, which closed in September 2020. The location features about 2,300 square feet of space between the ground floor and basement, and is estimated to seat a total of 74 guests inside at once.
For the menu, Via Toscana is expected to serve a wide array of light snacks like imported cheeses, bruschette, focaccia bread and pizza, alongside meats like capicola and salami, and tapas like meatballs, lobster ravioli, and gnocchi pesto. Via Toscana will also serve hearty entree dishes like their 55 oz Porterhouse steak, their lemon pepper chicken, and their grilled swordfish, as well as a unique family-style focaccia & contorni plate that will offer typical hot focaccia, dip cheese, mixed meat, fried calamari, eggplant marinara, spicy sausage, porchetta toscana, and arrosticini, all served together for the purposes of sharing and tasting. For their beverage program, Via Toscana lists over 15 different unique craft cocktails, as well as a robust selection of imported French champagne and an impressive collection of spirits.
Chef Della Pina is currently in the process of acquiring a new liquor license for the space, and he is currently proposing operating hours of 12:00 PM – 2:00 AM every day, seven days a week. While Via Toscana is still too early into development to have its own social media presence, you can visit Patrizia’s to get a taste of Andrea’s signature style of cooking.
