Trattoria Bugatti brings Rome-style fettuccine Alfredo to Dallas

At Trattoria Bugatti, the dish that tells you exactly what kind of Italian restaurant this is arrives without cream. Erin Willis built the fettuccine Alfredo around butter, garlic, pasta water and Parmesan, a Rome-style version that cuts straight through the heavy American expectation and has already become one of the menu’s breakout hits at 3850 W. Northwest Hwy. #1190, near Love Field.

That point of view is the real story behind the opening. Trattoria Bugatti opened April 20 as a collaboration between the Bugatti family and Odeh Restaurant Group, giving one of Dallas’ longtime Italian names a new chapter about 10 miles from the original Bugatti Ristorante on Bachman Lake. The old restaurant, known for northern Italian cooking and attentive, old-school service, closed its original location in 2023 and later returned in Farmers Branch. This new trattoria is a more rustic, modern expression, aimed at younger diners but still tied to the family’s original reputation.

Willis is not just preserving the brand; she is reworking it through her own background. The James Beard Award nominee previously owned and ran RM 12:20 Bistro, and she has said her cooking was shaped by time in Italy, especially the way she learned to read pasta, sauces and regional technique there. That matters here because the menu does not treat Alfredo as a throwback novelty. It treats it as a statement of method, and the handmade pasta is there to back it up.

The kitchen’s supply chain reinforces that idea. Trattoria Bugatti sources fresh pasta from Fresh Pasta Delights in Plano, the family-run maker that began manufacturing fresh pasta in 1984. Opening-week demand ran hot enough that the restaurant reportedly ran out of pasta and had an extra 10 to 20 pounds delivered to keep service moving. For a pasta-focused room, that shortage says as much as any menu description: Dallas showed up for the noodles first.

The rest of the opening menu keeps the same balance of comfort and precision. There are gnocchi bolognese, sachetti shrimp scampi, Lasagna Rotta, cacio e pepe wings and house focaccia, along with steak salmoriglio built on an 18-ounce Allen Brothers T-bone, eggplant parmesan, pork Milanese and roasted spatchcock poussin. Lubbies Bagels supplies sourdough pizza and focaccia dough, Botolino Gelato handles gelato, and mixologist Chris Henley shaped the beverage program while also serving as general manager at Bowen House.

But the dish people will talk about is still the Alfredo, because it makes the clearest case for what Trattoria Bugatti wants to be. It is not chasing the cream-laden version most Dallas diners know. It is betting that a Roman-style bowl, made the hard way and carried by fresh pasta, is the stronger argument.