Daniel Scordato will move his popular Italian restaurant, Vivace, from St. Philip’s Plaza to the old Foothills home of Anthony’s in the Catalinas.
Scordato hopes to open Vivace in its new digs in mid-March. He will close the St. Philip’s location two weeks before that. No firm date has been set, he said.
“I love the location. I like this place (St. Philip’s); it’s been very good for me. But I saw the potential of having a free-standing building that overlooks the town. It was too good a deal to pass up,” Scordato said late last week.
The move will increase Vivace’s capacity by 48 seats with the addition of a sizable banquet room, but the dining room will seat roughly the same number as Vivace in St. Philip’s, 4310 N. Campbell Ave.
Scordato has spent the past three months renovating the 9,000-square-foot space at 6440 N. Campbell Ave. Most of the $400,000 project has been cosmetic, including replacing flooring and painting. He also moved the bar from the center of the restaurant to the side and replaced electrical wiring and plumbing.
Scordato opened Vivace at Grant and Swan roads in 1993 and moved it to St. Philip’s Plaza eight years later. In 2009, he spun off a pizza restaurant, Scordato Pizzeria, also in St. Philip’s; he is selling that restaurant to his nephew Justin Fitzsimmons, who has helped run it since it opened.
Anthony’s in the Catalinas was a destination fine-dining Italian restaurant for 25 years when owner Anthony Martino closed it on Sept. 3.
