Affordable. High technique. Suburban. Independent. Sounds like everything you’d want in your neighborhood restaurant, right? Risata, opening Monday, March 10, in downtown Robbinsdale is a bit of a unicorn right now. It’s not an extension of the DDP empire, it’s not another restaurant that Travail has taken over or that Jester is incorporating. It’s two guys who’ve opened dozens of restaurants for others, doing their own thing.
Brendan Denne and Bryan Gooding inside Risata in Robbinsdale
“I realize I’m gonna be in restaurants forever. And it’s, like, either get into a hotel group or something bigger or open my own spot,” said co-owner Bryan Gooding, who cut his teeth opening Lake & Irving with Chris Ikeda.
“We’ve always been of the mindset like, I want to do it on my own,” said Brendan Denne, who has opened Colita and Rosalia for Daniel del Prado’s group and ie by Travail among others for the Travail Collective. “I don’t know if it’s ignorance or being dumb, but we wanted to do it for ourselves and not really bring in an investor or do it under the umbrella of a bigger restaurant group, because those options were there, for sure. We envisioned it in our heads: it’s us doing it.”
There was drama. Because they were bootstrapping it, the Small Business Loan they got was held up because of the government shutdown at the end of 2025. A four- to six-week process was hitting eight weeks and counting because the government wasn’t open to give the final go-ahead.
“And then come nine weeks, and come 10 weeks, our fear was if the government shut down for three or four months, all of a sudden we’re on the hook for a lease and all this stuff, and we don’t have a loan to get a restaurant open, so we’re screwed,” said Denne. The two co-owners spent a lot of time watching House hearings and committee votes, “and then, I mean, it literally kind of all came through at the 11th hour, just like, oh, my God, it worked. And then by the time when the government opened, they were able to push it through in five or six days, which was really nice,” he said.
The loan allowed them to buy new tables and chairs, retile the floor in the kitchen and in the small eight-seat bar, as well as doing the non-sexy stuff, like upgrading the electrical inside a more than 100-year-old building. “Our plumber kind of hates us now because every time he comes into the building, it’s just like, hey, there’s three more things we need done,” laughed Gooding.
An impressive Italian amaro collection is part of the Risata bar program
Risata feels like a restaurant a couple of hospitality pros would create. Pastas around $20, entrees like chicken parm, pork shoulder all’Amatriciana, swordfish picatta, and brick chicken scarpariello close to that price point also. The most expensive thing on the menu is a 9-ounce ribeye for $35!
The wine list features an all Italian selection by the glass, with prices around $10-$13. One of my pet peeves is hearing all the restaurant industry people moan about how Gen Z isn’t drinking wine, and then they roll out a wine list with glasses $18-$25. Be real. “When your drinks are as the same price as your food, it’s hard to justify drinking two glasses of wine,” said Denne. Cocktails are all classics, no shaken drinks, a negroni is on tap for $12—so, so smart.
A lot of this is the Lake & Irving ethos: Opened by the Ikeda brothers who both have strong culinary backgrounds, but the neighborhood went nuts for the burger and the chicken sandwich. “Don’t fight the neighborhood,” Gooding said he learned. “This was like back and forth between, ‘Hey, we want to be culinary,’ and I think a lot of people that go there know the identity, but then it’s also just, don’t fight the neighborhood.”
This will be quite different from the former tenant of the building, Nonna Rossa, but the spirit of hospitality and the idea of supporting a couple of families should be the same. Denne has a 2-year-old son already running around in the kitchen. “He loves running through here. It’s going to be really cool. What’s awesome is I’ve seen a lot of, like, great examples of that. Like, all the Travail guys have kids. You know, Chris has kids,” said Denne.
Soft opening is Friday and Saturday this week, they’ll take Sunday off (maybe) to take a breath before opening Monday. Reservations are open now—the restaurant has 99 seats, they could have gone to 100 but they didn’t want a closet door to slam into the back of a bar stool.
“It’s easier to work 80 hours for yourself than 50 for somebody else,” said Gooding. “You don’t mind. Because you’re building something.”
Open 7 days a week, 4-9 p.m., Risata Cucina, 4168 W. Broadway Ave., Robbinsdale, 763-703-4889, risatacucina.com
Dining and Cooking