Red, white and GREEN: Onesto takes Italian back home

Chef Vito Racanelli Jr. will be honest with you: he doesn’t like to dress things up. “A carrot’s a carrot’s a carrot…appreciate it for what it is.” he says with conviction, and you had better not argue with him.

Not that you’re going to want to when you see his latest restaurant creation, Onesto Pizza and Trattoria, opening on April 2. Nestled in a residential area of the South Hampton neighborhood, Onesto promises to bring classic, family-style Italian dining at its finest, along with eco-friendly upgrades that will appease customers and Mother Nature.

The restaurant’s inception began not with a blueprint, but with a smoker. Vito and soon-to-be partners Craig Stenson and Seth Berkowitz visited the South Hampton area to spec out a barbecue smoker, and left with a building that formerly housed a Slavic butcher shop, grocery store and some apartments. .

Six months of arduous work and a close-knit coterie of family and friends turned this ramshackle building into a chic, cozy establishment. The first room is outfitted with a glass case to display take-home meals and Vito’s homemade sauces and dressings. Behind the counter loom large, black ovens that will churn out Onesto’s East Coast-style, hand-tossed pizzas. The adjacent room sports a tin ceiling along with gentle lighting and nutmeg-colored walls and wooden benches that wrap the area in warmth.

Equally inviting are the extra lengths everyone has gone to in order to achieve environmental efficiency. “We have to display a moral obligation to ourselves, to our children,” says Vito (he and Michele are expecting).

Apart from the more basic task of recycling cans and bottles, Onesto boasts non-bleached, recyclable pizza boxes, a refreshing lack of Styrofoam, and reusable containers for its carryout service. Sandwiches will even be wrapped in paper with hemp rope. “You might not even get a bag here, you might just get your handed off to you and get on your way,” explains Vito with the unabashed gusto that is his trademark.

These feats of eco-friendly restaurant management will also carry over into the kitchen. Flour will be an organic, non-bleached brand from Heartland Mill in Marienthal, Kan.

And freeze-dried foods are taboo here; produce will be fresh and pasta such as lasagna sheets and fettuccini will come from Jamey Tochtrop and his crew at Stellina Pasta in South City.

“I know some farmers who are going to grow some things for me that are not 100% organic,” states Vito, “but they’re gonna grow me some good vegetables… They’re gonna get clipped off the vines, packed up in wooden crates, and they’re gonna come here to me. And they’re not even going to touch a refrigerator.”

With such promising ingredients, scrumptious food is sure to follow. The menu is a refreshing mix of Italian staples and classic Bronx dishes (Vito hails from the Big Apple). Patrons can order an Eppi Roll, a Bronx re-incarnation of stromboli with Italian sausage, vegetables, and mozzarella swaddled in pizza dough. Or they can have fettuccine made with real Italian Parmesan, a bit of egg yolk, and a touch of nutmeg and black pepper. “That’s the way that dish is made, that’s the real thing, and that’s what I want to bring,” says Vito.

He also wants Onesto to live up to its name as a Trattoria, which involves family-style dining. Restaurant-goers are encouraged to order a large dish or two and share it from a big serving dish, just as a family would do at home. The menu is stripped to the basics with the hopes of delivering top-notch, quality food. “We want to go back to those original flavors,” says Vito with enough conviction to let you know he’s serious about his food.

Vito is ebullient about good food and family. “We did this,” he said. “We all worked together. No one person did a greater job than the others.” The result is a restaurant that is a marriage of passion for good food and ingredients, and a commitment to the planet that sustains it.

You can e-mail Sarah at sbmoore@artsci.wustl.edu.