Chris Hynes
A tease of Bar Corallini’s future dishes.
Perhaps you’ve seen excited social media posts from people who popped in to Bar Corallini over the long Memorial Day weekend. The Italian restaurant in the old Chocolaterian Cafe space on Atwood Avenue is not slated to officially open until June 4, but will continue to have a limited menu and limited hours (6-9 p.m.) through May 31 before closing for furniture installation, says Caitlin Suemnicht, chief creative officer for Food Fight Restaurant Group, which is partnering with chef Giovanni Novella on the venture.
Novella, formerly of Cento and Fresco, both Food Fight restaurants, hails from Torre del Greco, a city near Naples in southern Italy. Suemnicht says many of the pasta dishes on the menu are dishes Novella learned from his mother and grandmother, including the eggplant fritters and Rigatoni Alla Genovese, a classic Neapolitan dish featuring a hearty meat-based sauce.
The restaurant will focus on pasta and pizza, with just a few entrees, says Suemnicht. That is to “get the price point down to the middle teens,” she says.
Bar Corallini will have an extensive cocktail menu and a wine list with “unique Italian varietals,” says Suemnicht. The front of house managers are sommeliers as well.
The space is transformed from the February 2018 fire that devastated the historical building that housed Chocolaterian and the Schenk-Huegel Co. uniform store before that. Suemnicht says the renovation plans included saving as much of the historical walls as possible, including some of the original brick. The renovations also uncovered upper transom windows that for decades had been covered by store signs.
The kitchen was moved to create more continuous seating and there’s a new curved bar, made of solid brass, that seats 15. Suemnicht says the restaurant has a neighborhood feel, though its decor is elegant and eclectic.
“Foodwise, we want it to be everyday Italian,” she says, noting the long-gone Pasta Per Tutti, a Food Fight restaurant, which was located across the street in the storefront now occupied by Tex Tubb’s Taco Palace. “We loved that spot. We always wanted to get Italian back into that neighborhood. When Giovanni wanted to do an Italian place and wanted something more casual than Cento, it was just a perfect match.”
