Fifteen months after their wedding in January 2006, Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown quit their jobs, put everything they owned into storage, and booked a flight to Europe for what turned into an eight-month backpacking trip. They tracked down members of Tonidandel’s extended family, who lived in small towns near the mountainous northern Italian village of Andalo.

Thirteen years after they opened their first restaurant, Crêpe Cellar Kitchen & Pub, in an 80-year-old former furniture store in NoDa, the pair returned to Andalo—sort of. During a four-week “blitz” build-out, Brown and Tonidandel transformed Crêpe Cellar into an Italian restaurant they named Ever Andalo.