More than 20 years ago, while Portland restaurateur Adam Berger was learning to make pasta in Montelupo Albese, Italy, he would watch the matriarch of the the restaurant bake her daily focaccia: Pans slid into the wood-fired oven, and bread would emerge airy and crisp at the bottom to be placed at the tables in the dining room. “I can still remember tasting it when it came out of the wood-burning oven,” he says. “I’ve just been really, really intrigued by focaccia for quite a while.”

Berger is perhaps best known for his Kerns Italian pasta shop and market, Montelupo, though the chef ran a number of different Italian restaurants in Portland before then — the super-casual polpette spot 24th & Meatballs, and date night favorite Tabla. Berger’s next venture: A focacceria and market in Portland’s Westmoreland neighborhood, opening this week in the former Baes space.