Cotto Modern Italian Trades Burgers for Handmade Pasta in Vinings Jubilee

Cotto Modern Italian held its grand opening Thursday, September 17, in Vinings Jubilee, taking the space at 2850 Paces Ferry Road SE that Stockyard Burgers & Bones vacated earlier this year. It's the second location for the Fork U Concepts restaurant group, following the original Cotto in downtown Gainesville, and it's run by husband-and-wife owners Scott and Alexis Kinsey. Fork U Concepts also operates Taqueria Tsunami and Silla del Toro around Atlanta, so this is a group that's actively betting on more than one metro location right now, not a single-shop operator testing the market. The fireplace from the old Stockyard dining room stayed; everything else got redone into half-moon booths, a wine wall and a mix of traditional and contemporary art.

The menu is built around handmade pasta and wood-fired pizza, made from scratch: lasagna Bolognese, gnocchi with shrimp, veal piccata, cacio e pepe, burrata with a balsamic pearl in place of the usual drizzle, and an Italian porterhouse for the table. Pizzas run toward things like a calabrese-pepper pie. Google's listing puts the average check at $30 to $60 a person, which tracks with a full-service Italian dinner rather than a quick plate. The bar leans into the concept too: 84 wine selections with five Italian labels poured by the glass, plus a Cotto Barrel Aged Negroni and an espresso martini built with limoncello and amaretto instead of the usual coffee liqueurs.

Hours are dinner-forward, which matters if you're planning around it: noon to 8 p.m. Sunday, 5 to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, and noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, with brunch on the weekend. There's no lunch service Monday through Friday, so this isn't a midday stop between showings. Parking is the shared Vinings Jubilee lot, the same retail-and-restaurant row that already holds Mellow Mushroom and a handful of other Paces Ferry Road regulars, so expect the lot to fill on a Friday or Saturday night.

My own read: this is a date-night and small-group dinner spot, not a casual weeknight grab, and the fact that a four-year-old Gainesville concept chose to expand here says something about how the owners read the Vinings corridor right now. A new tenant renovating rather than just repainting a 2,850-square-foot space at Vinings Jubilee, with a full liquor and wine program, is the kind of commercial signal that's worth knowing if you're watching that stretch of Cobb County for a buyer who wants walkable dinner options near Smyrna and Buckhead.

Go on a weeknight if you want the quieter version of the room, and go hungry enough for both a pasta and the porterhouse to split. Order the burrata to start, then the lasagna Bolognese or the gnocchi with shrimp, and ask about the Italian wines by the glass rather than defaulting to the cocktail list.

Photo courtesy of Cotto Modern Italian's Google Business Profile.