Italo brings handmade pasta and daily focaccia to Uptown Charlotte

At the doors of Bank of America Corporate Center, one of Uptown Charlotte’s most visible restaurant addresses is changing hands again, and Italo is making a sharper promise than the space’s last life. The new concept is led by veteran restaurateurs Pierre Bader and Briana Cohen, and its calling card is simple: handmade pasta, fresh focaccia made daily, and imported Italian flour from Molino Pasini.

That flour matters. Italo says the kitchen is using Molino Pasini flour imported from Lombardy, and Molino Pasini describes itself as a four-generation flour maker with 100 years of history. In pasta terms, that is not window dressing. It signals a restaurant that wants diners to notice the texture, the chew, and the difference between a dough built on commodity flour and one built with a baker’s sense of purpose.

Italo’s own description fits that approach. The restaurant calls itself an intimate pasta house and wine bar, built for gathering, which is a cleaner, more focused identity than the broad Italian catchall many Uptown spots settle for. In practical terms, that means the menu is likely to lean on a narrower lane: pasta and focaccia first, with wine as the natural companion rather than the main event.

The space itself already has a clear downtown rhythm. Cicchetti opened there in October 2019 as a Venetian-style wine bar and retail wine shop from Pierre Bader, at 100 N Tryon St. inside the Bank of America Corporate Tower doors at Trade and College streets. OpenTable places the address in the heart of Uptown Charlotte, a short walk from the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Spectrum Center, Bank of America Stadium and Knight Theater. That is the kind of location that feeds on pre-show dinners, business lunches and the after-work crowd all in the same day.

For pasta fans, the change is bigger than a name swap. Charlotte magazine noted in January 2024 that the city’s roster of Italian restaurants keeps expanding, and Briana Cohen has said Charlotte’s Italian eateries have had to pivot as importer and supply conditions tightened over the last two years. Italo’s answer is clarity: a compact pasta-house model, a recognizable flour story and a menu built around the things diners actually remember the next day. In a district that can sometimes feel overloaded with polished but interchangeable options, that kind of focus could make 100 N Tryon St. matter all over again.