It’s not often that a chef can launch a restaurant, abandon it, and return five years later to find the premises vacant and waiting for him. But such is the case with Michael Toscano and his old Greenwich Village digs, Perla, which relocated and ultimately closed not long after Toscano departed New York to open Le Farfalle in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife, Caitlin.

The building’s owner had been holding out for the perfect tenant, and when she contacted Toscano, who’d been looking to expand down South, she made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now the chef will shuttle between the two kitchens — “I can get a 6 a.m. flight and be at my Thompson Street apartment at eight” — and augment his hearty Italian menu with newfound ingredients and influences.