RED LODGE — Italian pop-up restaurant Piccola Cucina returned to Red Lodge on a snowy Tuesday for its sixth season. The restaurant is only open six months out of the year, so if you wanted to try their food during the winter season, that would require a trip to New York.
You won’t find dishes like theirs anywhere else in Montana.
“We love their food. We come every summer,” said Billings resident Chandra West on Tuesday. She had reservations there to celebrate her birthday with her husband and was the restaurant's first customer of the spring season.
The restaurant has three locations in New York, one in Ibiza, and one in Red Lodge.
The owners of the restaurant happen to have a home in Montana and decided to open the seasonal restaurant part of the year.
“We have just original recipe from Italy so what you eat here is like [what] you go to in Sicily,” said head chef Benedetto Bisacquino.
Bisacquino and manager Erika Doddo are both from Sicily. In fact, the majority of the members of the team are from Italy.
It’s all part of their mission to serve authentic Sicilian food, such as arancini catanesi.
“…Saffron rice stuffed with chopped meat, tomato sauce, green peas, and mozzarella,” Doddo said.
Bisacquino said serving authentic food like theirs does have its challenges.
“In Montana, there’s not so many Italian restaurants, so [getting] all the products from Italy is not easy,” said Bisacquino.
Ingredients like tomatoes, fish, and even squid for calamari are flown in from Italy. It’s part of the charm that draws diners across Montana and beyond.
“I think it’s such a beautiful addition to this community. It is absolutely worth the drive from Billings to come here,” West said.
Doddo said that the fact that people drive hours to visit the restaurant is always a pleasant surprise.
“When people come from Wyoming, I’m like really? You come from out of state just for us, so it’s like all the time incredible and unbelievable,” said Doddo.
Bisacquino has even had reunions with Montanans in New York City.
“Because they enjoy what we’re doing here, and they say, oh we’re in New York, we’ll come to see you,” Bisacquino said.
He said they’re even starting to influence taste buds.
“When I come the first year, they don’t eat octopus. So now, when people come in, they’re just coming in for the octopus,” Bisacquino said.
It’s a community welcoming the culinary gem and a restaurant also embracing Montana and the people in it.
“Montana is beautiful, you can see it. Beautiful view, peaceful. But the real thing is the people. Montana makes the people, like people make Montana,” said Doddo.
“You enjoy this because you feel like there’s something that makes you love this town,” Bisacquino said.
