Amore Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen opens in Armonk

Hats off to the Mazzotta brothers for their renovation of the building at 1 Kent Place in downtown Armonk. Over the past ten years a parade of failed (mostly) burger joints passed sadly through its doors. (The Grill, Stoneleigh Creek, Armonk Lobster House, Finnegans, The Fire Pit – no pun intended.) One by one they came and went, a veritable boulevard of broken dreams – the town’s psychic equivalent of the famous Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks.”

The deck chairs on the Titanic

Enter the property owners, Mark and Joe Mazzotta, who were looking to hit the reset button on their restaurant, Amore, whose lease was up after a seventeen year run in Armonk’s Town Centre. But they had to do more than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic to turn 1 Kent Place around.

“We wanted to create a place that showed our passion for what we do,” Mark Mazzotta told us. “We turned this old roadhouse grill tavern” (and that’s putting it mildly) “into a two-story Tuscan style farm house that is complementary to the upgrading the town has experienced in recent years.”

“It turned into a complete gut job but in trying to reclaim as much of the original materials as possible we discovered, under layers of sheetrock, a great brick wall that became the centerpiece of everything we did.”

What they did was create a 65 seat rustic Italian pub with 25-foot ceilings and exposed posts and beams from an old barn in the Catskills they bought for spare parts. The floors are polished concrete and there are plenty of de rigueur industrial style lighting fixtures with antique look Edison bulbs.

They added a glass garage door in the 15-seat bar that overlooks an acre of land with a brook. By May 1 it will have a terrazzo patio seating 85, an outdoor wood oven, a vegetable garden, and a bocce court. “We will never be a fully sustainable farm to table restaurant but in season we’ll harvest tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and herbs to enhance our preparations.”

Upstairs there will be a 40-seat room available for private dining. And there’s a separate entrance for carry out. We like that.

 Viva 1 Kent Place

They recently re-opened as Amore Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen, complete with artisanal brick oven pizza, a streamlined menu of nuts and bolts Amore favorites and daily trattoria specials that emphasize seasonal and contemporary ingredients.

Recent specials included a roasted butternut squash soup, brick oven roasted beets over burrata with a Napa Valley EVOO, Tuscan kale salad with sherry vinaigrette, toasted pecans, aged flurries of ricotta and blood orange slices, and a skillet roasted Atlantic cod over broccoli rabe with roasted garlic.

The pasta is homemade and in a nod to the location’s history they have added a burger to the menu that is made from brisket, short ribs and Angus beef.

But do we really need another Italian restaurant in Armonk?

While the Mazzotta brothers may deserve a medal for improving the landscape in downtown Armonk, and one can never underestimate the public’s appetite for pizza and good Italian food, I had to ask Mark, “Does Armonk really need another Italian restaurant.”

“We bring with us a lot of loyal clientele and we have an intimate space that is wallet friendly for families and couples. At the end of the day there are a lot of restaurants in Armonk but we’re just two brothers working 15-hour days, living our dream, following our passion to deliver good food and good service. And you can never have enough of that.”

(Amore Pizzeria and Italian Kitchen, 1 Kent Place, Armonk, 914.273.3535; www.amorearmonk.com)

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