Authentic Italian Pasta Shop Expands to Cincinnati Airport Concourse B

Pasta now has a gate number at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. VV The Italian Experience opened its second location on April 16 in Concourse B near Gate B17, giving travelers a local Italian stop right in the middle of the airport flow instead of another generic terminal meal.

The new airport outpost sits in a partnership with SSP America and took over the former Regina’s Italian Kitchen space, a temporary concept that marked the spot while CVG kept reshaping its dining lineup. VV is open all day and is built around the kind of food that travels well and reads fast: breakfast, appetizers, salads, handhelds, entrées, wine, cocktails and aperitivo offerings, with piadinas, pasta Bolognese and pasta alla Genovese among the signature draws.

That matters at CVG because the airport has made no secret of what it wants from concessions now. Its 2024-2025 strategy centered on improving passenger choice and integrating local flavors, and VV fits that brief cleanly. In 2024, CVG handled 9.2 million travelers, which turns a neighborhood favorite into something much bigger: a daily calling card for local Italian food in front of a huge captive audience.

VV’s airport debut also pushes a story that started far from the terminal. The brand traces its roots to the 1940s in Casamassella, Puglia, when Erminio Stefano began growing wine, vegetables and pastries. The family later branded the business Vigne Vecchie, and the Cincinnati operation has been presented as a three-generation family story carried forward by Melissa De Giorgi and Andrea Stefano. The original Mount Lookout location officially opened on May 22, 2023, after the couple spent about a year looking for the right spot on Delta Avenue.

For Cincinnati diners, the appeal has always been that VV feels unmistakably Italian, not merely Italian-American by way of a food court. Keith Pandolfi captured that reaction bluntly: “I had never seen a place in Cincinnati that felt so quintessentially Italian.” That same identity is now being asked to work under airport pressure, where food has to be welcoming enough for a layover and sturdy enough to survive the rush near Gate B17.

CVG and SSP America have now given that identity a much larger stage. With local travelers, tourists and business flyers all passing through Concourse B, VV has moved from Mount Lookout favorite to airport ambassador, bringing a very specific Pugliese point of view to one of the busiest food rooms in Northern Kentucky.