Agustín Kitchen, the anchor to the west side Mercado District plaza that featured a rotating cast of sometimes prominent chef operators and a menu grounded in locally-sourced ingredients and European influences, closed its doors for good at the end of August.
In the next month or so, the 4,800-square-foot space at 100 S. Avenida del Convento will be home to an Italian restaurant whose owners hope to introduce Tucson to the varying breadth and depth of Italy’s foodiverse.
Il Santo Italiano Rustico will borrow its menu from all corners of owner Vito Prencipe’s native Italy.
“We’re trying to basically do what’s the real regional Italian cuisine, and we’re trying to create a space that can allow us to do that,” said Prencipe, who moved to Tucson from his hometown of Puglia in southern Italy 14 years ago.
Prencipe and his wife, Tucson native Bonnie Callahan, had been dreaming about opening their own restaurant for years but were looking for the right location. What started out as casual what-if conversations with Agustín Kitchen owners Adam Weinstein and Kira Dixon-Weinstein turned into “we’re doing this” after Prencipe resigned his day job with North Italia just a few weeks ago.
“It came together extremely quickly,” he said.
In addition to room for more than 80 diners inside, the Agustín Kitchen space at 100 S. Avenida del Convento in the Mercado District shares a spacious patio with the shopping center’s other eateries.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star
Prencipe was a manager with the upscale North Italia and had helped open a number of locations around the country, training employees on the intricacies and culture of Italian cuisine. At home in Italy, he was the director of a culinary institute and had spent a dozen years studying food sustainability.
He said he had wanted to write a book with his wife, a published writer, “because we were trying to share the story about the magic behind Italian food and Italian food network.”
Keep reading with a digital access subscription.
The couple hopes that story comes through at Il Santo, which will follow that sustainable food mantra with locally sourced ingredients “that match the idea, the flavor profile, that we’re looking for,” he said.
That story will scale the Italian countryside and coastline, bringing the flavor of every region to the plate.
“We are focusing on the regional Italian cuisine,” Prencipe said, describing it as “the Mediterranean diet” that also includes pasta and pizza. “But we will have a huge variety of vegetables. We’ll have a huge variety of beans, and we will have a huge production inside here.”
Prencipe said the kitchen will be led by a Michelin Star chef trained in Italy.
Dixon-Weinstein said she and her husband, who own the Mercado District that includes the MSA Annex, always had operators run Agustín Kitchen, but “I think that gets hard over time,” she said. After the most recent staff turnover, “we were realizing we needed to really lean in and we weren’t sure we had enough time to give it what it really needed,” she said.
Dixon-Weinstein said they had met with Prencipe and Callahan about Il Santo and wanted to find a way “to get them into the district.”
For 13 years, Agustín Kitchen in the west-side Mercado District was a community hub and local gathering spot, known for its locally-sourced chef-driven menu. The restaurant closed at the end of August.
Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star
“It seemed like the perfect idea because their concept is so special and it’s going to be so great,” she said. “We want to make sure that any business (in the Mercado District) supports all the other businesses around it, and that they all support each other. It’s an ecosystem.”
Il Santo will join the district’s other eateries, including the Mexican restaurants Rollies and Seis Kitchen, the Japanese restaurant Kukai, Bōs Burger and the juice bar El Zumitos.
Dining and Cooking