Chef Leigh Hutchinson remembers the moment her future came into focus. It was nearly two decades ago, and the then twenty-year-old college student was standing on the Piazza della Repubblica, in Florence. “I even remember what I was wearing,” she told me with a laugh.

At that moment, the third-generation Italian American knew she wanted to open a restaurant in her hometown of Dallas, the kind of place that was intimate and warm, where the owner knew customers by name. Her dream took a while and then some. She had gone to Italy on a semester abroad, immersing herself in its culture and foodways. (She would also eventually visit all but one of the country’s twenty regions.)