The Amalfi Coast Meets La Jolla at Incoming Italian Spot Marisi Italiano

Delayed by the pandemic, Marisi Italiano is now planning for a Spring 2022 arrival in La Jolla. Developed the Adler and Lombrozo families and named for their grandparents, the Italian restaurant is opening directly adjacent to the Wall Street location of the Adler’s Puesto Mexican Artisan Kitchen & Bar; it replaces Whisknlade, the neighborhood institution that shuttered in 2020 after a dozen years in operation. Operating for lunch and dinner, Marisi’s design is inspired by the Amalfi Coast and its cliffside towns along the Mediterranean.

Originally intending to launch early last year with former Cesarina chef Patrick Money, who currently helms Ambrogio15 at Sky Deck, the restaurant will now be led by Chad Huff, who comes to San Diego from Los Angeles where he was most recently the executive chef at Broad Street Oyster Co. in Malibu and has cooked at Felix Trattoria in Venice and at the Michelin-starred Providence. His menu for Marisi highlights homemade pasta, from tortelli, a filled pasta paired with oyster mushrooms and brown butter, to tonnarelli alla gricia, a classic from the Lazio region of Italy that’s an eggless cousin of carbonara. Other dishes will include beef carpaccio with green onion, pine nuts, and horseradish and calamari with Calabrian chilies, tomato, and shallots.

Marisi Italiano

With input from the group’s culinary director Erik Aronow, an alum of Republique, Destroyer, and Vespertine in LA, the restaurant will have an extensive bar program created by bar and spirits creative director Beau du Bois (The Restaurant at Meadowood) that ranges from Italian aperitivi to house limoncello and even an Italian pilsner made just for the restaurant.

Marisi Italiano

Marisi Italiano

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