In 2021, Pete Murdaca was trying to prep meat next to a stack of dirty plates, ready for the dish pit, when he realized that he needed a bigger restaurant.
The parking lot of his ever-popular, Old World Italian restaurant Pietro’s was too small. Customers were jammed in like sardines. “We were getting close to the line of being busy into chaos,” Murdaca says. “It was just time to move.”
Now, four years later, that move is finally underway. Pietro’s in Lodi will close its location on Kettleman Lane on Saturday, November 1 to relocate to 282 Rocky Lane in Reynolds Ranch, reopening the following Saturday, November 8. The new restaurant is a 300-seat, 9,000-square-foot palace, with the exquisite new interior imagined by De la Cruz Interior Design and Arcanum Architects from San Francisco, the same team that worked on the Kettleman Lane location’s 2017 remodel.
Feasts aren’t uncommon at Pietro’s. Alanna Hale
While the move felt necessary for growth, it also created an opportunity for exciting new features, such as the region’s first pasta lab. “We’ve almost, quite literally, outgrown the space that we are in,” Murdaca says. “It’s a square peg jammed into a round hole at this point, which is a great problem to have.”
Murdaca comes from a long line of Italian restaurateurs. His grandfather moved his family from Italy’s southwest region of Calabria to Vacaville in the 1960s, where his grandfather opened the first Pietro’s. His father moved to Lodi in 1985 and opened a new Pietro’s, with a family-friendly menu that became a hallmark of the times: pizza, pasta, salads, pitchers of beer. That restaurant has served the community dutifully for 40 years.
Despite the significant change in size and atmosphere, the menu will stay almost exactly the same. Black pepper cream gnocchi, a wide array of pizzas, and baked eggplant Parmigiana will welcome diners at the new spot just as they have at the old. For years, the fresh pasta has been the main character at Pietro’s, but the restaurant also features a Lodi-centered wine list and classic cocktail menu.
The Mamma Mia! of vodka and St. Germain arrives topped with dehydrated pear. Alanna Hale
One of the most exciting changes at the new location is that customers will be able to see the pasta-making process in real time. The pasta lab, with its almost floor-to-ceiling windows, will also produce housemade sourdough baguettes, house focaccia, and brioche Murdaca cites a small operation he visited in Rome for inspiring the pasta lab, although he points out that Flour + Water’s pasta room in San Francisco is similar. Murdaca says the restaurant had already evolved from a red sauce joint to “more of a Tuscan mom-and-pop in the early aughts.”
To be clear, the original Pietro’s founded by Murcada’s grandfather in Vacaville (as well as a second Vacaville location, now aptly called “Pietro’s #2”) is still around, 60 years later. That original restaurant is run by other members of the family; Murdaca says “some separation of church and state” was good for the clan. At one point, he says there were 10 or 11 Pietro’s throughout Northern California; today, there are just three. The first two are still much in line with that original family-restaurant vision, serving Hawaiian pizza and spaghetti with clams.
Murdaca hopes the expansive new Pietro’s continues to be both a destination for out-of-town travelers and a mainstay for locals. He adds that COVID’s many externalities included a large influx of city dwellers exploring more suburban areas within driving distance, and that many new diners discovered Pietro’s during those years. If he’s able to maintain the three core tenets that made Pietro’s a hit — quality food, customer service, and respect for its employees — Murdaca says this larger location will be a hit.
His mom’s nervous, he says with a laugh, but his dad’s excited. “He’s a tried and true operator, man,” he says with a laugh. “He’s in the back sorting silverware until one o’clock in the morning. Yeah, that’s him.”
Pietro’s (282 Rocky Lane) will open on Saturday, November 8. Opening hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday.
The arancini at Pietro’s is a favorite on the small side. Alanna Hale
Dining and Cooking