When a new restaurant opens in a food town, it’s exciting. But that excitement compounds when it’s a well-known chef leading it.
On Nov. 16, Vinson Petrillo, executive chef at Zero George, opens Costa Charleston, a restaurant dedicated to coastal Italian fare, in The Jasper on Broad Street.
Costa will be a larger format than Zero George, but keep the same creativity. “We’re just going to be playful with the food like we are at Zero, but … it’s going to be higher volume,” Petrillo said.
Petrillo grew up in an Italian family with roots hailing back to Southern Italy, near the Amalfi coast. Costa will feature influences from Petrillo’s background, inspired by his upbringing but with a coastal focus.
“We’re going to use local ingredients, but we’re also going to bring in some cool stuff from over in Italy and even a little off the coast of Spain as well,” Petrillo said.
With Costa’s opening approaching later this month (you can make reservations now at costacharleston.com), Petrillo teased a few dishes.
“We’re gonna do a chicken but in the style of a porchetta,” he said. He added that this dish is prepared over a three-day process from brine to finish to get it “all crispy and awesome,” he said.
Another dish will include hothouse tomatoes cut in half and topped with grated fresh garlic and basil. The tomato is then wrapped and squeezed over a Steamboat Creek Oyster that will be lightly dressed with a touch of olive oil.
“It’s a little interactive. And when you eat it, it’s just like, it tastes like this Italian garden,” Petrillo said.
James Beard Award-winning architect Glen Coben designed Costa’s interior, which includes an open kitchen, Italian racing green and other bright colors to give the restaurant a coastal vibe. Coben designed two New York City restaurants: the now-shuttered Bâtard, for which he won a James Beard Award, and Gabriel Kreuther, a double Michelin-starred French restaurant.
At Costa, Petrillo wants to tap into shareable experiences, like family dinners.
“When I was growing up as a kid, Sunday dinners were a really big deal. We just load the table with food, and it would come out, you know, everybody would just share and pass around things,” Petrillo said. “That’s the kind of environment we want to have here at Costa as well.”
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