Great news for devotees of Stellina Pasta Cafe: the South City spot will reopen tomorrow.
The establishment at 3342 Watson Road closed in mid-March for renovation and expansion, and co-owner Lisa Tochtrop just chatted with us about what she and hubby Jamey have accomplished there in the past few weeks.
“We had a patio with a little tiki bar outside for the last couple of years, which served us well in the nice weather,” she said. “But when it was closed or raining, we had some problems with accommodating everyone. So what we’ve done is enclosed that, and we built a bar indoors. … We expanded our seating – we actually doubled our seating capacity. We’ve added some booths and some banquettes to make it a little easier to seat larger parties. We added another stove to the back, and we’re gonna bring on some more staff as well. And we’re just kind of growing in every direction.”
Fans of Stellina’s cuisine likewise have much to anticipate. “We are adding a couple new sandwiches, and we’ll have lots of new entrée choices,” she noted. “Of course, we’ll still keep all our favorites. But we’re just expanding our menu a little bit. We’re adding a really cool braised-beef sandwich – I think [Jamey’s] gonna call it The Beast, which is gonna be a lot of fun. And we also have done in the past a chicken wrap with lots of cilantro and black beans, and that was so popular we’re gonna put it on the menu permanently.”
Sounding just a bit dazed, Tochtrop reflected on the work involved in the past few weeks. “We’re going to open tomorrow hell or high water, but there’ll still be some things that we’re gonna complete, like our bar may not be finished,” she said. “We had hoped to be open on the first, but that just wasn’t possible because we had so much to do. We had to pour foundation. We salvaged some old brick to do the front, to kinda look the same, to be in keeping with what we have, and so we had to source that. We didn’t want it to look like a brand-new building – we wanted it to flow.”
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2010.