Atlanta has Italian restaurants of all stripes, but what it has lacked—until now—is a place combining the cheesy romance of an old-school Italian American red-sauce joint with modern culinary techniques and refined presentations.

The idea for Gigi’s Italian Kitchen came to Eric Brooks in 2019 while he was visiting North Beach—San Francisco’s bustling Little Italy neighborhood, where famous chefs like April Bloomfield had injected new energy into beloved classic places like Tosca Cafe. Why, he asked himself, don’t we have something like that in Atlanta?