Chef Kevin LaCivita and EAT Restaurant Partners founder Chris Tsui have a bit of a history. Ask them about it, and there will probably be some banter back and forth about their beginnings. But the how and when isn’t nearly as important as why they’ve remained in each other’s worlds.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust him,” LaCivita says. “We’ve known each other for over 20 years.”
Earlier this month, LaCivita and Tsui launched Civita Italia, their modern take on Italian cooking built around housemade pastas and a focused wine program, located in Short Pump’s GreenGate development at 3401 Haydenpark Lane.
This venture isn’t the pair’s first collaboration. LaCivita was head chef at Tsui’s ambitious “nose-to-tail” gastropub, The Blue Goat, which had a five-year run in the 2010s. They reconnected five years ago, when Tsui called LaCivita and asked him to come out of retirement. He then became head chef at Red Salt Chophouse & Sushi, but there was always an idea waiting in the wings: What about Italian?
Tsui says it was LaCivita who inspired EAT Restaurant Partners, owners of a dozen-plus concepts and counting, to bring the vision to life. After years of waiting for the right place and right time, the eatery represents their version of Italian dining, a mix of comfort, recipes passed down through generations and modern flourishes.
“I love his food, and it was because of him that we went for an Italian restaurant. I knew I wanted to do something with him,” Tsui says.
For LaCivita, this restaurant carries a different kind of weight. After more than four decades in the industry, it’s the first time his name has been on the side of a building.
“This is Red Salt magnified by, like, 10, because you’re building from scratch,” LaCivita says. “And three-quarters of my name is on the door, which is terrifying, but a good terrifying. My dad would be so proud.”
LaCivita says this is a return to the kind of cooking he grew up around in Pittsburgh, where his parents’ Italian and Irish heritage shaped what landed on the table. His career brought him to Richmond, where he worked at Lemaire before opening Pomegranate, a Mediterranean- and European-focused restaurant that operated in various iterations from 2000 to 2009 and 2014 to 2016.
“That’s my roots, Italian cooking,” LaCivita says. “My mother’s a great cook. My dad was a great cook, my youngest brother’s a chef, too. We all cook. But there’s a lot of things that we’re doing now that I grew up with.”
Throughout the menu, there are hints of LaCivita’s upbringing, from the dark chocolate in the Bolognese — a secret touch from his grandmother — to the lasagna recipe borrowed from his mother and made with pork, beef and ricotta. LaCivita has also immersed himself in Italian cooking during travels to Rome, where he set out to discover the distinctive nature of dishes such as carbonara and cacio e pepe.
The restaurant extrudes the majority of its pasta in-house — other than finicky bucatini — using only semolina flour and water. Next to the kitchen is a pasta room, a dedicated area for mixing, kneading and drying strands of spaghetti, long tendrils of linguine, sauce-soaking and texture-trapping pappardelle, ridged rigatoni, and sheets of lasagna noodles. Since opening, LaCivita says, they have been producing 2,000 pounds a week. Pasta cookers help with execution, keeping the noodles from sticking together as they cook.
Antipasti moments: a poached artichoke with zippy lemon aioli; arancini with fontina and basil pesto cream; beef carpaccio joined by caper berries and minced shallots, aged balsamic and dollops of a roasted garlic sauce; spinach-stuffed mushrooms with white wine butter; and more.
Pasta dishes range from a Bolognese sauce crafted with a blend of short rib, rib-eye, chicken and pork served with pappardelle to a spice-forward shrimp fra diavolo and decadent short-rib ravioli in a shallot, thyme and veal cream sauce. Then there’s the unapologetically decadent carbonara, relying on butter, cheese and hunks of crisped guanciale. “No-cream carbonara,” LaCivita says sternly. “It’s a real carbonara.”
Classics show up in the form of eggplant and chicken Parmesan, veal marsala, lobster risotto, a behemoth 24-ounce bistecca alla Fiorentina, and whole branzino. “We wanted to be approachable but stick to the basics and have dishes people can recognize,” LaCivita says, noting that specials will be dishes where the kitchen can play and take advantage of seasonal ingredients.
Meal-ending dolci range from tiramisu and panna cotta made in-house to filled-to-order cannolis studded with crumbled pistachios, chocolate chips or tri-colored sprinkles, along with ricotta cheesecake and a flourless chocolate torte. After-dinner drinks include housemade limoncello, grappa and Tuscan dessert wine. Civita Italia also serves espresso, cappuccino and French press coffee.
Italian classics such as Negronis and Aperol spritzes are available on tap, while house cocktails include the Cosmo-inspired Sicilian Sunset and the herbaceous, Manhattan-esque Exile From Firenze. The wine program, however, is perhaps the restaurant’s biggest statement, assembled with the help of local wine representative and Impero Wine Distributors portfolio manager Valentina Giordano. The 11-page wine list reads like the itinerary for a tour through Italy, with bottles from regions that dot the map from north to south. Behind the bar, a cellar holds hundreds more.
“The wine list is second to none,” LaCivita says.
Entering the sleek, minimalist restaurant, the first thing guests see is the shell of a replica Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa mounted on the wall. Tsui, a self-described car guy, says it felt like a fitting centerpiece for an Italian restaurant.
The open space is split between a hotel-style lounge with C-shaped booths, curved seating and a long bar and a spacious dining room with vintage checkerboard tile. A private dining room space also provides extra seating, along with an outdoor patio.
Of the lounge, Tsui says, “We wanted the space to be swanky. We wanted people to come in here and go, ‘Oh, hey, this doesn’t feel like Richmond.’” At neighboring Red Salt, he adds, guests set the precedent for lingering at the bar. “We found out that people really enjoyed hanging out there.”
What motivates Tsui to keep opening restaurants after amassing a vast local portfolio (including the recent opening of a new location of Lucky AF just a mile away) and expanding out of state? At this point in his career, the answer isn’t necessarily that he needs another restaurant, but that he has people who need somewhere to go.
“We have so many great people that work with us that we want to keep pushing them and give them opportunities,” Tsui says.
For LaCivita, this move reflects the long, winding career that brought him here.
“I don’t know what else I can do at this point, I’ve been doing this for so long,” he says, smiling. “Once the industry gets its talons in you, it’s hard to get away, and I love it. You have to love what you’re doing, especially when you’re in a restaurant business.”
Civita Italia is open 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m. Lunch service will start in the coming weeks.
