‘Childlike excitement’ inspires the chef behind new restaurant Kiddo

One day five years ago at Valette, a farm-to-table restaurant in Sonoma County, Calif., sous chef Wyatt Piazza gave a tour of the garden to a young boy and his grandmother.

At the end of the tour, Piazza said, the boy “just sprinted over to the tomato vines and grabbed the biggest heirloom tomato right off the vine and shoved his face into it, getting juice everywhere. He had such a huge smile on his face.”

This sight shaped the plans for Piazza’s own restaurant, kicking around in his head. “Seeing that moment reminded me of that childlike excitement that people can get around food,” Piazza said. “I really want to cultivate that excitement.”

Piazza and his wife, Elizabeth Drake, open Kiddo on Friday on the corner of 12th and Pine Streets in Washington Square West — five years, a move to Philadelphia, and several well-attended pop-up dinners after that late-summer afternoon on the farm.

It’s BYOB until the liquor license arrives. Reservations are online through Resy.

Kiddo represents a top-to-bottom renovation of the former Pinefish, which closed in early 2022 after six years. (Pinefish replaced Pine Street Pizza, whose 32-year run ended in 2015.)

Drake, who designed Kiddo, had the bar, with eight seats, moved to a wall facing 12th Street and had a six-seat drink rail made of maple installed alongside the window. The kitchen is now closed off, allowing more bar seating. The adjacent 28-seat dining room feels warm and contemporary, with an indie-rock soundtrack and framed photos on the walls.

Seasonal, local vegetables make up the backbone of Kiddo’s menu, and that’s because “I do think that a chef is supposed to play the role of a steward of the environment, so to speak,” Piazza said. “We help control what’s on menus and what’s popular and what people are buying. It’s important to me to make the right choices when it comes to that.”

“I’m not saying we have to cut out meat completely, but we should eat more vegetables and if we do eat meat, it should be locally sourced and raised properly,” he said.

Piazza paused.

“I don’t want you to get the sense that this is going to be a place that will be pretentious or, quote unquote, refined,” he said. “I view it more as a very nice setting where we can all just enjoy some food at the end of the day. I want the food to be great, but at the same time, I really want this to be an unpretentious experience for people.”

Piazza, 29, grew up on Long Island and moved to Ithaca, N.Y., to attend a joint hospitality program from Cornell University and the Culinary Institute of America. He met Drake, also now 29, while both worked in a restaurant in Ithaca, her home town. The couple bounced among California, Ithaca, and Philadelphia before and during the pandemic. They have been in Philadelphia since 2021, when he took a sous chef’s position with chef Townsend Wentz at Oloroso and A Mano. Piazza left last year to work at cafes as plans for Kiddo took shape.

The couple searched the city, at first looking for restaurant spaces near their home in Fairmount, but fell for Pine Street in Washington Square West, home of such restaurants as Mixto, Effie’s, and Mabu Kitchen.

“It’s bustling there all the time,” Piazza said.

“And the neighbors have made us feel so welcome,” Drake added.

Piazza believes that the food, just like that tomato in the garden, should also surprise.

One dish on the opening menu is a whole Jack Be Little pumpkin, which Piazza brines, rubs in herbs, and roasts it. Right out of the oven, he cuts it into pumpkin wedges that are encrusted in panko, parsley, sage, oregano, and thyme. The skin is edible, too.

The dinner menu includes four snacks ( like root vegetable chips with beet hummus), three pastas (such as bucatini with sunchoke cream, mushroom conserva, rapini, and pumpkin seeds), four small plates (including wild mushroom fondue with poached egg and sourdough croutons), and three “big plates” (a Duroc pork chop; delicata squash stuffed with farro, roasted garlic, and bread crumbs, set atop chermoula; and coriander-crusted duck breast, the top-priced dish at $36). Piazza said he expects a $50-per-person tab, plus drinks.

Piazza is aiming high with his weekend brunch menu, which includes duck confit hash with cauliflower, pickled onions, sorrel, and a sunny-side-up egg; fried egg and focaccia tartine with smoked pepper hollandaise and green onions; and a sourdough Dutch baby with pears, maple syrup, and brown butter.

One of the signatures will be a cookie plate on the dessert menu. “I grew up in an Italian American household, so a cookie plate is like a common thing for us at family functions for dessert,” he said.

Kiddo, 1138 Pine St., will serve dinner from 4 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Monday, and weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.