01
Cooked slowly
We don't have a microwave. Pasta rolls at 9 am, ragù starts at noon, the fire lights at 5. The food takes the time it takes.
Our story
Twelve seats.
A pasta roller.
One small fire.
Espresso Roast started in 2017 as a 12-seat pasta shop on Linden Avenue. Eight years later it's a wood-fired Italian kitchen, but the room still feels the same — warm, slow, and run by people who actually care what's on the plate.
The kitchen, in long form
The idea was simple. Cook Italian food the way nonnas still cook it in the small towns north of Bologna — slowly, by hand, with what's growing right now. Open a room that's warm enough that you'll stay an extra glass. And don't ever put a microwave in the building.
That was 2017. The first menu was six dishes. The room fit twelve. The line was out the door by 6:30 every night, and we ran out of pasta before we ran out of guests. We added more seats in 2019, then a wood-fired hearth in 2021, then a two-acre garden behind the building in 2022. The room got bigger. The menu stayed short.
Today Espresso Roast is 60 seats, a chef's counter, a small bar, and a list of 18 dishes that change with the season. The pasta is still rolled every morning. The fire is still lit at 5. The team is 18 people, most of them with us since the beginning.
— Marco & the team
What we care about
Four things we'd never
change about this place.
02
Made by hand
Every pasta, every bread, every dessert is made in-house by a person you can see from the counter. Nothing arrives pre-made.
03
Local & seasonal
We buy from farms within a 90-mile radius when we can. The menu changes with the harvest — not the marketing calendar.
04
Generous portions
We'd rather you leave full than impressed. The plates are big, the wine list is long, the bread basket is bottomless.
The team
The people who run
the kitchen and the floor.
Marco Esposito
Chef & Owner
Born in Naples. Trained in Modena. Cooked in New York and San Francisco before opening Espresso Roast in 2017.
Aria Romano
Pastry Chef
Spent five years at a Michelin-starred bakery in Bologna. Makes every dessert on the menu and the gelato on Sundays.
Daniel Park
Sommelier
WSET-certified, focused on small Italian producers. Builds a list that's all under $80 a bottle and nearly all worth ordering.
Sofia Greene
General Manager
Runs the floor and the front of house. The reason your table is ready when we said it would be.
Eight years
How we got here.
2017
The door opens
12 seats, a pasta roller, and a menu of six dishes. Sold out by 8 pm every night for the first three months.
2019
The room grows
We knock out the wall next door and add the bar, the chef's counter, and 24 more seats.
2021
The garden starts
A 2-acre plot behind the restaurant grows most of the herbs, tomatoes, and greens on the menu.
2023
The cookbook
Slow Food, Warm Hands: our first cookbook. Sold out three times in the first year.
2025
Today
60 seats, a wood-fired hearth, 18 people on the team, and a line out the door on Saturdays.
Come sit with us.
The kitchen is open Tuesday through Sunday. We'd love to cook for you.