H-Street Kitchen has new owners, and they might look familiar

The owners of H-Street Kitchen announced this spring they would close their Hillsborough Street restaurant for the summer and return this fall with a new concept.

Monday, the owners of Pizza La Stella announced they would help launch that new concept. The La Stella Restaurant Group bought the H-Street Kitchen space and will launch La Stella Wood Fired in partnership with the H-Street Kitchen owners.

The new restaurant is expected to open in the transformed Varsity theater space in late September, according to a news release. Triangle and Two Hospitality Group, a partnership of industry veterans and N.C. State graduates Gary Bryant and Jeff Brock, opened H-Street last summer and served modern food with local flair.

The new restaurant will feature a menu of wood-fired food – such as meats, sandwiches, game-day appetizers, craft-your-own salads, pizzas and desserts. The menu also features Puccia, the restaurant’s take on a wood-fired sandwich stuffed with vegetables and cheeses.

The food will be cooked in a 1,000-degree oven – the only cooking element in the restaurant – that’s N.C. State red.

La Stella Wood Fired, a 6,000-square-foot space across from NC State University, will have an “industrial farmhouse ambience,” according to the owners. They plan to revamp the second floor – now enclosed – to create a partially covered rooftop patio that overlooks Hillsborough Street.

Executive Matt Kepp, who has been chef at Pizza La Stella, is collaborating with La Stella Restaurant Group owner Rudy Theale on the menu.

Pizza La Stella opened in downtown Raleigh on Fayetteville Street in December with a menu of Neopolitan-style pizza with “craft flair.” There also are fire-roasted Brussels sprouts, fontina macaroni and cheese, salads and wood-fired chicken wings. Similar items may make their way to the Hillsborough Street restaurant: Old Bay Boiled Peanuts, Roasted Potato Poutine and Duck Confit and Honey-Habanera or Dr Pepper wood-fired wings.

Since it opened, it has added full service at dinner as well as a weekend brunch menu with breakfast pizzas and waffles, from a partnership with Smash Waffles. (Smash Waffles, a waffle delivery service based in Greenville, has plans to open its own spot on Hillsborough Street this fall, too.)

Info: La Stella Wood Fired will be at 2420 Hillsborough St., Raleigh, and will be open daily. pizzalastella.com, smashwaffles.com

This story was originally published August 7, 2017 at 5:49 PM with the headline "H-Street Kitchen has new owners, and they might look familiar."