Photography by Kathy Tran.
Chef Leigh Hutchinson, owner of Via Triozzi, has always been immersed in two things: food and family.
It began with Hutchinson’s grandmother, a Sicilian American who Leigh says embodied the stereotypical Italian household where everyone’s fed, lunches turn into large dinners and no one is a stranger, especially at the dinner table.
Cooking was a regular part of her upbringing, so it came as no shock when she left her bachelor’s degree in public relations and retail work to chase the chef life.
At 28, Hutchinson was working as an assistant buyer and manager at Nest — a lifestyle store that has since closed. Retail offered stability during a tough job market in 2008, right after she graduated from college.
For about a decade, Hutchinson had been “bothering her family” with a restaurant concept. With two uncles deeply rooted in the industry in Austin and New York, she felt inspired, and “life’s too short” not to chase the culinary itch.
At 29, she had an epiphany: “This isn’t where my heart is. I’m almost 30, I gotta figure this out.” She packed up her belongings and her dog and moved to Italy to take culinary courses at Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici and privately studied with Gigliocooking founder Marcella Ansaldo. At the time she only knew about three people, and she didn’t speak the language.
As an eager rising chef, Hutchinson was inspired to learn the dishes from all regions, and if she wasn’t in class she was on a train to a city, festival or harvest to learn something new. But the one genre she loved the most was always Italian.
When she moved to Dallas, her dreams turned to reality. Hutchinson’s family supported her idea and eventually, she opened an Italian restaurant that would maintain her grandmother’s legacy on Lower Greenville.
It’s Via Triozzi.
Why did you choose the Lower Greenville neighborhood to house Via Triozzi?
I remember having my first restaurant idea in 2006 as an undergrad when I was 20 and studying abroad. I was standing in the middle of Florence at a very known Piazza there, Piazza della Repubblica, and I was like, “You know what? Dallas, needs something like this.” Eighteen years ago when I moved back to Dallas I had no location in mind, but ideally, I wanted something over here because it’s close to where I live. Then one day our broker called and said, “Hey what do you think about Lower Greenville?” I said, “That would be a dream … but what’s available in Lower Greenville?” Then we looked at it and here we are.
As you hit your one-year mark, what are some things you’ve learned along the way?
Honestly, every single day you have to wake up ready for battle. When we were first opening we ran into so many different things and all management and staff kept saying, “Pivot and figure it out.” It’s a team effort here and all the gears have to work together to make the ship sail, the project work and the restaurant tick. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing and you look around the room and you see people cheersing and laughing while eating and I take a minute and remember this is why I do it.
What stands out as the most rewarding thing as an owner?
I promised my grandmother and my family that the legacy would keep going. Sometimes my dad would come in and make his way down the bar and look at what everyone is having. Most of the time he knows someone in here. Although these dishes may not be the same as my grandma or anything she taught me, it’s just the experience of dining together that feels like I’m honoring my family.
We saw you were on the Food Network show Chopped. What did it feel like to be selected for the competition?
When I got the DM from a random person saying that she worked for the casting agency at Food Network, I thought it was spam. I asked my friends and family and eventually wrote her back and I had several interviews and questionnaires, it was sort of like a long job interview. Never in a million years did I think I would ever be on Food Network or that this restaurant would do what it has done. I’m just a girl with a dream who likes making pasta.
What was your experience like on Chopped?
The show gives me anxiety watching it but when I got there I was in full survival mode. You just focus. Once I saw our ingredients for the Tuscany challenge my brain just started ticking. Honestly, I was so zoned in that I don’t even remember a camera being there. I’ve had times when I did private dinners where I’ve had to pivot because an ingredient wasn’t available but nothing where I had to make a dish in 20 minutes while being filmed. I mean I even did a run-through with my friends a couple of nights before I left. We were closed here for dinner and they came here and we ran through drills and I had them stand in my way so I couldn’t get to a cutting board or an ingredient. My goal was to not get cut first and I was able to figure it out and make a meatball from scratch in 20 minutes.
