Washington Street Hospitality has built a solid stable of restaurants in New England, with Pasta Beach locations in Boston and in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island, and Mr. R. Fusion in Newport. The group recently expanded its purview, heading south to Charleston, S.C. to open Legami, an Italian restaurant, which debuted on October 9.
Legami is a family affair, led by brothers Eldredge and Tyler Ropolo, whose parents founded the original Pasta Beach in 2002.
Eldredge manages front-of-house responsibilities and works with the culinary and beverage teams on menus, while Tyler designs the restaurant spaces and serves as the creative director and head of development.
The menu offers traditional Italian dishes with creative accents
“Charleston has always been known as a sophisticated, foodie city,” Eldredge Ropolo said, adding that the city welcomes innovation within its restaurant scene. “It always has had the perfect aura that the Washington Street Hospitality group was looking for in its pursuit of a new adventure.”
Legami is the Italian word for “ties” — not the kind you wear around your neck, but the kind denoting the connections between people and places. The Ropolo brothers felt the name was fitting for their first Charleston restaurant, and they even enlisted their cousin, a Charleston lawyer, to help them navigate this new territory and make the project a reality.
The restaurant is two stories, features an open kitchen and seats 180 guests. The downstairs dining room is stocked with a mix of rattan chairs, pastel green banquettes, and white Carrara marble tables, and the walls are lined with antique mirrors and Indonesian wood carvings. The second floor has a more intimate dining area and a lounge for late-night drinks and music. There are also two outdoor dining spaces, a street-level patio, and an upstairs terrace.
Italian-born chef Andrea Congiusta runs the kitchen. He formerly worked for Michelin-starred restaurants in Rome and Milan, Italy, before joining Washington Street Hospitality.
Legami doesn’t serve the classic Italian cuisine one might expect, Ropolo said, noting that chef Congiusta likes to merge traditional ingredients with creativity and artful presentation.
The menu begins with a selection of small plates, including oysters, rotating crudos, and caviar service, as well as fresh focaccia, gnocchi fritto, and braised octopus. Handmade pastas range from ravioli with ricotta and tomato to a king crab tagliolini. Larger plates include grouper, scallop risotto, and filet mignon done in a variation on the Wellington stye, with prosciutto and mushrooms and wrapped in puff pastry.
The filet mignon alla Wellington is wrapped in puff pastry
James Ruggiero leads the beverage program at Legami and all Pasta Beach locations. He stocked the wine list with Italian bottles and created a menu of playful cocktails, like the Legami Martini, which combines Calabrian chile olive oil-washed vodka with Castelvetrano olive brine and burrata-stuffed olives.
“Charleston is a city open to new and evolving food ideas, making it a perfect city to present Legami, [which serves] a more modern Italian cuisine seen frequently throughout parts of Italy today,” Ropolo said.
Washington Street Hospitality doesn’t currently have more projects in the works, but Ropolo said they do have several ideas. In describing the group’s philosophy moving forward, he invokes the idea of legami.
“The traditional connecting with a new method or creative thought that brings something original to the plate — we are hoping that is what our future holds,” he said.
