Enzo’s Italian Market opens sprawling Matthews flagship with osteria, cafe and enoteca

Enzo’s Italian Market & Osteria opened a sprawling new flagship in downtown Matthews, and the 9,000-square-foot site at 130 Matthews Station St. is built to be much more than a place to grab pasta and go. The new store gives the Charlotte-area Italian market a market, an osteria, a cafe and an enoteca under one roof, with the cafe and enoteca set to open later in the week.

That scale changes what visitors can do there. The market already stocks imported olive oils, pastas, desserts, prepared foods and take-and-bake items, while the broader buildout is designed to add patio dining, a wine bar, a butcher counter and bakery offerings. In Matthews, where the town center has been adding restaurants and retail, the new Enzo’s reads as a place to shop, eat and linger rather than a quick errand stop.

Greg Tigani, who took over the business from founder Enzo LoRe in 2022, said he kept the original recipes while expanding the concept and operations. He said he wanted visitors to have an “experience, not a transaction.” That idea is visible in the layout, which is meant to encourage customers to move through different parts of the market instead of rushing past the shelves.

The Matthews flagship is more than six times larger than the original Stallings shop and twice the size of Enzo’s Lancaster, South Carolina, location that opened in 2024. Enzo’s says its original market was founded in 2009 by LoRe in Stallings, and the company still describes itself as the area’s only authentic New York-style Italian market. LoRe, a Sicilian-born food lover, built the business around traditional Italian flavors and homemade specialties, giving the new Matthews store a link to the brand’s older, butcher-minded approach to food preparation.

The location also places Enzo’s inside the Matthews Station mixed-use development, near Mecklenburg County Library, Matthews Town Hall and the planned Discovery Place Kids-Matthews museum, which is currently slated for 2029. That setting gives the opening a larger downtown role, especially as Matthews continues to add businesses and public attractions around the town center.

Tigani has said he was inspired by Eataly, and the Matthews flagship shows that influence in its scale and mix of retail and dining. For pasta shoppers, it creates a place to pick up imported ingredients, order prepared foods, sit down for a meal and make a special trip around a regional Italian-food destination that now has room to grow.