Ambrogio15 pizzeria planning menu, name evolution

Nine years ago, San Diego’s Ambrogio15 Restaurant Group started out with a single Milan-inspired pizzeria in Pacific Beach.

Since then, its owners have opened multiple concepts, including a Michelin-recommended fine dining restaurant, an Italian wine bar, an aperitivo-themed cocktail bar and two food hall locations. Some spots did not succeed, but the company’s flagship restaurant in P.B. has thrived.

Now, co-founder Giacomo Pizzigoni said it’s time for the original Ambrogio15 pizzeria to evolve. On Oct. 9, it will be rebranded Ambrogio15 – Modern Trattoria & Gourmet Pizza. (In the meantime, the restaurant is open and serving the original menu.)

The restaurant’s new menu will still have all of the company’s signature pizzas, including the sausage-topped Hannibal Lecter, spicy Salamino Piccante and Prosciutto & Burrata (named San Diego’s best pizza in a Union-Tribune 2020 roundup). And they  will be priced the same as before.

But the new menu will also include a revolving mix of six to seven seasonal pasta dishes created by the company’s trio of Italian chefs, Enea Sintoni and Fabio Pizzigoni from Rome and Filippo Giglio from Calabria. All three worked at both modern trattorias and Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy and they’ll bring a fine-dining touch to their pastas and regular specials.

The new dishes, which may change slightly in the coming weeks as the recipes continue to develop, will include Italian-style alfredo and carbonara dishes, fettucine with oxtail ragu, rigatoni with Calabrian Nduja sausage and sea bass tartare and spaghetti with clams, black garlic and sea urchin.

Pizzigoni said four of the new pastas will be priced under $20. “We want to do our cuisine at a price that everyone can afford.”

He said the rebranding is a reflection of all that he, his business partner Andrea Burrone and their operations manager Jacques Calame have experienced since 2016, including at their tasting-menu-only Ambrogio by Acquerello restaurant in La Jolla, which earned a 2024 Michelin recommendation but closed last December.

“We’ve come a long way from where we started,” Pizzigoni said. “We opened six or seven concepts over the past nine years. Some worked, some didn’t. But this location (in P.B.) is our home. It’s where we have long-term clients who know us. We want to bring what we’ve learned over the years to this location.”

The new menu will also include three new main course entrées — including a sliced Tuscan steak dish, a whole sea bass in potato and zucchini crust and a filet mignon in Barolo wine and black truffle sauce. They will range in price from $34-$49. There will also be some new fried appetizer dishes, including squash blossoms stuffed with sea bass and black truffle and a calamari dish served with Italian-style ketchup.

In the coming weeks, the kitchen will get some new cooktops for live-fire cooking and frying. Pizzigoni is also planning to import Italian-made bronze die-cut durum wheat semolina flour pasta, which he said holds up better for some of the new dishes than regular fresh-made egg pasta.

Pizzigoni said it’s a risk to make these changes at a restaurant with a loyal neighborhood following, but the diner favorites will remain and now these diners can also have a taste of everything its owners have discovered along the way.

“My main goal is to serve the best pasta in San Diego at an affordable price, where the classics are made to perfection with a strong focus on the ingredients and they are complemented by some more creative/unique dishes,” he said.

Ambrogio15 Pacific Beach

Hours: Noon to 9 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; Noon to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays

Where: 926 Turquoise St., San Diego

Online: ambrogiopacificbeach.com