Monday, July 27, 2009
News / Restaurant openings Whitfield's Team Launching Brio Bistro Italiano
Posted by Carrington Fox on Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:04 PM
Nathaniel Beaver and Gary A. Cormann, the ownership team at Whitfield's Restaurant and Bar near the Highway 70/100 Split, are taking over the location of the bygone Wildwood Oak-Fired Kitchen in Bellevue. The new restaurant venture will be called Brio Bistro Italiano and will serve a menu of upscale Italian cuisine.
Located at 8128 Highway 100, Brio will serve dinner only, starting at 4 p.m., seven days a week, with happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m.
Cormann will serve as executive chef, overseeing menus at Brio and Whitfield's. The team will remodel and restructure the space to create a lively atmosphere similar to the ambiance at Whitfield's, Beaver says.
The Italian-inspired roster will focus on local ingredients, including local homemade pasta. Brio will employ the wood-fired oven to bake a repertoire of six to eight rustic flatbreads. The wine list will include 60 to 70 Italian wines.
Beaver and Cormann took over Whitfield's in February 2007 and have established a loyal following. "Now, we're crazy enough to try it again," Beaver says. He expects to open Brio in September.
Comments (4)
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So is this completely unrelated to the chain?
http://www.brioitalian.com/index.html
Seems pretty close, might run into some trademark issues...
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Glad to hear they are doing well. I still feel like we're in that uncertain stage of which restaurants will survive and which won't, so it's nice to see an independent expanding.
if upscale means 20 bucks and up, not sure that's the best plan for these days, but what do I know?
Does anyone use these wood fired ovens to bake bread ? Seems like that would be an awesome side business.
but again, what do I know? (not much, except that I'd definitely spend a couple bucks on fresh wood-baked bread !)
The problem with breads in these kind of Wood ovens is that the ovens generally operate between the temperatures of 500 and 1000 degrees Fahrenheit which makes for burned outsides and doughy innards. If the oven is in it's "burning out" cycle, phenomenal breads can be made around the edges of the oven, however the drastic variance of temperatures in only a couple inches of space, doesn't fare well with baking loaves. Flatbreads come out of these ovens excellently, as well as pizzas because of their thin bodies which aren't as susceptible to the heat variances.
Another problem is of course space constraints, being only to fire a couple of loaves at a time in an oven roughly 4 feet by 4 feet (without taking consideration for the fire).
