Max Fath had no plans to open a new version of Toscano Café Bistro, the Mediterranean restaurant in Richmond that his parents had owned for 14 years. For years after its 2017 closure, if anyone asked him about relaunching the business, where he’d worked full time for a decade, “It would have been a resounding, ‘Hell, no! I would never own a restaurant,'” Fath, 35, said with a laugh.
He recounted this last week while sitting at a white linen-draped table in his own Toscano Bistro, which — despite previous emphatic declarations — Fath opened in December in Williston.
The sign from the Richmond Toscano hangs in the center of the new restaurant, which seats 110, double the original. The same decorative painter did the warm marbling on the walls of both restaurants. Aside from those details, the concrete-floored, high-ceilinged, suburban venue feels very different from the intimate, century-old, small-town home of its predecessor. But fans of Jon Fath and Lucie Bolduc-Fath’s Richmond spot will find the menu largely familiar.
Rich mushroom ravioli ($29) still swims in an indulgently creamy roasted garlic-and-gorgonzola sauce. Pasta Bolognese ($32) retains a notable smokiness thanks to the “healthy hit of bacon” included in his father’s recipe, Max said. The classic shrimp and scallop fra diavolo ($34) comes with a moderately devilish kick to its marinara.
That continuity is partly thanks to the new Toscano chef, 36-year-old Dan Gutches, who learned from Jon, now 70, while cooking by his side in Richmond. Gutches is one of the reasons that Max ended up doing what he swore he’d never do.
Max was 13 when his parents launched the original Toscano. Jon had started out as a drummer on the bar-and-wedding band circuit, his son said, but decided to apply his creative energy to a New England Culinary Institute degree to provide a more stable family income.
The middle of three sons, Max bused tables as a young teen and rose to become “Mom and Dad’s main guy” after he graduated from high school, he said. Though he enjoyed working in the cozy eatery, he didn’t have the same passion for restaurants as his father.
“I definitely don’t possess the artistic gene that my father does,” Max said. “I’m numbers. I’m business.” After his parents retired, he got his real estate license. “When I was a kid, I watched Scrooge McDuck dive into his pool of gold coins and thought, Wouldn’t it be cool to be that rich someday?”
Max knows that few restaurateurs these days are awash in gold, but his priorities have shifted. “I’m glad I took seven years to grow up,” he said, noting that he’s now more aware of the impact a small, well-run business can have on the local economy and the people it employs.
A year ago, Max was selling real estate and working for Jr’s Williston and the associated Sidebar, which together occupied the space he now leases. Shortly after the two venues closed in July, Gutches’ place of employment, McKee’s Pub & Grill in Winooski, also shuttered. (It has since reopened.)
Max and the former Toscano cook had stayed in touch. Over the years, Max recalled, “We’d joke about it, like, ‘Hey, how you doing? You ready to open up the old shop?'”
Then, last summer, they both were.
Max knew he had the skills to manage a restaurant, and now he had a chef. Working for himself was appealing, Max said, and he enjoys many elements of the hospitality industry: hosting community gatherings and working with lots of different people. With the full support of his parents, he decided it was time for Toscano 2.0.
The business side of Max knew it would be easier and more lucrative to open a sports bar with a menu of fried foods bought frozen and cooked on “a line with 10 fryers,” which require minimal culinary training. “It’s high profit, and people eat it up,” Max said, “but it doesn’t make my heart sing.”
He saw an opportunity for an elegantly appointed restaurant with white tablecloths, cushioned chairs and complimentary baskets of locally baked bread.
“I’m trying to bring back that leisurely enjoyment of a meal, like a dinner party,” Max said.
Despite its larger, contemporary space, the Williston restaurant feels warm and comfortable, with interior half walls that divide the main dining room. Area rugs soften the concrete floor and help dampen noise.
As for the menu, Max saw no reason to reinvent a well-tested wheel. He and Gutches have made a few tweaks, such as subbing a cider-brined pork chop ($37) for the pork tenderloin his dad served with garlic mashed potatoes and maple-bacon Brussels sprouts. Among the few completely new dishes is a seasonal vegetable risotto ($27) with fresh herbs, roasted red pepper coulis, garlic confit and crispy leeks, though Max said his father’s pasta primavera might make a spring return.
While the menu is heavy on pasta and other Italian-accented dishes, it also includes grilled beef tenderloin ($44) and duck confit on a salad ($27) or as part of a mixed grill ($35). At dinner, all mains include a side salad, for which a small Caesar can be subbed for $5. At lunch, sandwiches come with fries or salad; pasta and other hot entrées come in slightly smaller portions than at dinner, without salad, and cost several dollars less.
The kitchen turns out a solid Caesar ($16) with broad ribbons of Romano cheese, croutons from Middlesex’s Red Hen Baking and, for $2, the refined addition of white anchovies. Other crowd-pleasing starters include generous piles of crisply fried artichoke hearts ($14), served with a lemony aioli; and fried calamari ($17, tentacles included, as they should be), spangled with tangy banana peppers and served with both house tomato sauce and the aioli.
Less successful for me was the appetizer of seared sea scallops ($19), which were sadly overcooked, oversalted and overwhelmed by butternut squash purée and the cured pork jowl bacon called guanciale. I should have picked the crab cakes ($20), which I had on my second visit for lunch, in a sandwich ($21). I pulled the crab-heavy, well-seasoned patty from its bulky roll to savor it fully.
The crab cakes were an early Richmond menu item that Jon removed toward the end, Max said. “I brought them back because I love crab,” he added. “My father was like, ‘Make sure your restaurant resembles who you are as a person, because that’s part of what your business should be.'”
Another non-Mediterranean offering that made the new Toscano’s cut for personal reasons is the kale and quinoa salad ($17) with roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries and Vermont Creamery goat cheese.
The salad was on the chopping block, but it’s a favorite of Max’s husband, Michael Hebert. “Happy spouse, happy house,” Max said.
Of the four entrées I tried over two meals, the chicken piccata ($29) reigned supreme, despite my general lack of excitement about boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I could see the appeal of the cream sauce-drenched mushroom ravioli, but it was too much for me, and I found the bacony smokiness of Toscano’s Bolognese a little off-putting, wishing for slightly more cream to mellow it out.
The piccata, which includes artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes along with the standard capers, more than satisfied my acid- and umami-loving palate. The pounded breast was tender and the linguine perfectly al dente. As a friend later said of her husband’s order, the dish is “his Italian restaurant go-to, and it didn’t let him down.”
That friend, Jacky McCue, 58, said the couple dined at the original over the years and were happy to hear of the new Toscano opening closer to their Williston home. She raved about the housemade ricotta gnocchi ($29) with optional housemade sausage ($6) and the seasonal vegetable risotto.
South Burlington resident Milissa O’Brien, 52, recalled teaching her four kids how to eat out at the Richmond Toscano. “We loved it there,” she said, noting that the original left “big shoes to fill.” The vegetarian said she appreciates the atmosphere in Williston, different as it is. But she does miss the pasta primavera, finding the current veggie options heavier than she prefers.
Her husband, by contrast, enjoyed his recent shrimp and scallop fra diavolo so much that, O’Brien said, “I think he may have licked the bowl.”
Portions are ample, but if you manage to save room, do so for cakes ($12 per slice) baked by Lucie, 67. They include a flourless chocolate cake and rotating cheesecake flavors, such as maple, amaretto and chocolate-peanut butter. Lucie also does the restaurant’s books, her son said with gratitude.
His mother and father have been supportive with advice when asked, Max said, while giving him space to do his own thing. When Jon and Lucie come to eat, he noted, his dad often chooses the tenderloin and his mother leans to cream-sauced pastas.
When Max dines at the end of a shift or comes in with Michael on his day off, his thrifty Scrooge McDuck persona sometimes surfaces, the restaurateur admitted. Though he loves the crab cakes and the tenderloin, Max said, “Being a little type A and money-focused, I don’t eat our expensive stuff.”