A newcomer to the booming SF restaurant scene, Barzotto is a 60-seat “fast casual” fresh pasta bar from first-time restaurateur (and longtime industry vet) Marko Sotto. By saving on labor costs?guests order from the counter and seat themselves?Sotto offers lower menu prices which, he hopes, might help revive the concept of the neighborhood restaurant in a city whose prices are out of control. In other words: “We want to see the families again,” Sotto (a parent himself) says.
Lucky for us, Sotto didn’t skimp on the design of the space?”A good dining experience for me is a combination of atmosphere, experience, and quality of the food,” he says?for which credit goes in equal parts to Sotto, interior designer Hannah Collins, and PR maven and close friend Jen Pelka. “I wanted our guests to sit down after ordering and start reacting to what they see around them,” he said. “You?ll feel like you?re in a full-service restaurant where you would be paying two or three times more.” Photography by Kassie Borreson, courtesy of Barzotto.

Above: A small display at the front of the restaurant offers retail wine, soft-serve gelato sundaes, and fresh and dried pasta for takeaway, sporting graphics by SF designer Danielle Moore?whose logo and branding design helped define the restaurant’s final look. The custom steel and ash wood shelving was fabricated by James Davids and Tesseract Woodworks.
For the order...