The Italian Job

Frankie's 710 Trattoria wants to be your neighborhood restaurant—even if it’s not in your neighborhood

Charlotte has its fair share of upscale Italian restaurants with hard-to-pronounce dishes and expensive wines. The city also has plenty of pizza joints offering oversize slices and cheap beer. What it needed was a neighborhood restaurant serving reasonably priced pizzas and pastas with a simple drink list and a casual vibe. And this is precisely the slot that the new Frankie’s 710 Trattoria is hoping to fill. Located in the former Pie Town space in Fourth Ward, the small restaurant, which is part of Pierre Bader’s Sonoma Restaurant Group, is serving heaping plates of traditional pastas, crispy-crust pizzas, and familiar red-sauce standards. For those who miss Pie Town, many of the pizzas, like the Bacon and Egg ($12.95) and the Wild Mushroom ($13.95), feature the same unusual combinations that were previously found on the menu. But the new stars here are the scalopinni dishes ($13.95-$17.95), which come in hefty portions, with thick breading and meats that retain their delicacy despite some heavy sauces. They’re cozy meals, and paired with the dimly lit interior and red-and-white checkered accents, they bring the restaurant one step closer to its friendly-neighborhood-joint goal.

Frankie’s
710 Trattoria
710 W. Trade St.
704-379-7555