A long-time restaurant on Lincoln Street in Wilmington has reopened.
Luigi Vitrone’s Pastabilities, located in a townhouse at 415 N. Lincoln Street, returned this week after being closed for a time.
The restaurant has long been a part of Little Italy, with Vitrone serving as president of the Little Italy Neighborhood Association and working on efforts to revitalize the area.
Vitrone came to Wilmington from Brooklyn in 1988 to open the restaurant. He has been dealing with health challenges in recent years and at one point emerged from a coma.
“My namesake restaurant has opened. New everything, plus old me,” Vittone wrote in a Facebook post.
Vitrone went on to write in an Email message that renovations have been made to the restaurant during the down time.
Vitrone says the new concept can be traced to his maternal grandparents’ Tuscan villa in “montreggioni” post-WWll.
The menu entitled “what’s cookin’ in Brooklyn” reflects the food, preparation, and presentation of his childhood. Of late, Brooklyn has become a hotspot for restaurants and even technology start-ups.
Tehnical.ly, which has a digital presence in Delaware operates a Brooklyn
Pastabilities is open Tuesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Its phone number is 302 656-9822.
The opening is good news for Lincoln Street, which on Sunday will see the closing of Bistro Jacques, the former Mona Lisa restaurant on the 600 block of North Lincoln. Also, closing was Kooma on the Wilmington Riverfront.
Jacques’ restaurant had been in operation for three years, offering French and Belgian food.
Vitrone says the closings are ” another symptom of a dysfunctional city government. Unfortunately for all the citizenry, we are faced with the perfect storm. We have both an administration, and a city council, that both lack leadership, integrity and any role in pushing us forward.”
