Beginning Mother’s Day with brunch and new Spring menu mid-May, Todd Villani, one of New Jersey’s most celebrated farm-to-table chefs, joins East Rutherford’s Vesta Wood Fired, as Executive Chef. Chef Villani reached notoriety for his locally sourced New American cuisine as Chef Owner of Terre à Terre. His farm-to-table ethos is a perfect match for Vesta, which focuses on Italian and contemporary American dishes created with local and seasonal ingredients – and prepared over a wood fired grille & hearth.

Vesta Wood Fired has been creatively preparing wood-fired dishes for almost a decade with chef/owner Frank Giampa at the helm. With the addition and take-over of Chef Villani in the kitchen, the restaurant will look to expand and elevate its menu further to include Chef Villani’s signature dishes cooked over the restaurant’s recently expanded wood-fired concept, rather than just a wood-fired pizzeria.

“This is really a fantastic opportunity for me to experiment with new flavors that only a wood-fired hearth or grill can give you,” said Chef Villani. “We can marry seasonal ingredients with the wood-fired heat and flavor to create distinctive flavors.  We intend to bring this romantic, rustic method of cooking to ordinary dishes and combine them with my fine dining technique to create a special experience.  I’m looking forward to charring, smoking, even burning some of our dishes to bring out new flavors.”

“The time was right for Chef Villani to join us,” said Frank Giampa, Chef Owner at Vesta Wood-Fired and local to East Rutherford. “We’ve been a local neighborhood mainstay for those who want a comfortable trattoria ambiance, and we’ve grown leaps and bounds to the point where we’re now ready for someone like Todd to step in.  More importantly, I think adding a local guy who lives walking distance, who is also super talented to lead our team is really going to further cement our reputation for serving local jersey flavor and hospitality.  If you want the genuine local pulse of Jersey, with the uniqueness of the wood-fired experience then we are certainly dishing it up unapologetically here…at Vesta Wood Fired.”

Vesta Wood Fired – 64 Hoboken Rd., East Rutherford, NJ 07073.