Angelo Mazzei of Toscana Wood Fired Italian in Scottsdale is as much a storyteller as he is a restaurateur. He moves from table to table, sharing the details of his dishes with diners who are eager to listen. Ask about the Bolognese, and his eyes light up as he recounts the family recipe that inspired it. Order the cioppino, and he’ll trace the dish’s history from northern Italy to your plate. Mention the caponata and he’ll paint you a picture of Italian farmers stewing their final summer harvests with sweet-and-sour agrodolce and jarring it up to last through the winter.
Mazzei’s love for hospitality traces back to a formative 21st birthday dinner at Chicago’s iconic Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse, where the experience convinced him that he had to one day create a place of his own. In the years that followed, including a move to Arizona, he worked front-of-house at top-tier restaurants and steakhouses, including Gibsons itself, Morton’s, and Mastro’s. At Toscana, which opened in 2024, he has created something uniquely his own, a fine dining Italian restaurant that honors his family’s heritage while incorporating the skills he’s honed over decades. “We focus on Northern Italian cuisine, specifically Tuscany—hence the name Toscana,” he explains. “My father’s family is originally from that part of Italy, and our last name is very indicative of that region.”
The warmth of Italian hospitality reveals itself from the moment guests are seated. Every diner who orders a pasta, risotto, or entrée is invited to choose from the “Something from the Chef” section featuring eight complimentary appetizers ranging from beef carpaccio dressed with fried capers and artichokes to a chilled seafood salad of shrimp and calamari served with squid ink cassava chips. The restaurant’s wood-fired oven, fueled with oak and olive wood, serves as the heart of the kitchen, turning out specialties like melted burrata with roasted garlic oil, basil, and Puglia confit tomatoes to a juicy 48-oz Steak Fiorentina carved tableside. The menu’s seafood, risotto, and pasta offerings are equally tempting, from Bolognese enriched with Barolo wine and served over fat paccheri pasta tubes, to pan-seared branzino accented with a bright herb emulsion.
Toscana is a story of a family man who spent years working, saving, and perfecting his craft until he could finally open the place he had always imagined. For restaurants like his, success relies not just on talent but on the community that embraces them. We caught up with Mazzei to learn more about his dream come true.
How did that moment at Gibsons lead to Toscana?
I’d never been in a restaurant like that before. This was during their heyday, when it was nearly impossible to get a reservation, but my best friend’s uncle was the bartender, so we were able to get a table. I walked in and thought, Wow. If this is possible, I have to try and do this. I have to make this happen. I had a lot of setbacks along the way, but finally, we had a little bit of a boom here in Phoenix. I had two properties, and when property values went up, I sold them, put all the money into the restaurant, and made my dream a reality.
What are some of your family recipes?
The caponata is my mother’s recipe. The Bolognese is too, but I’ve made it my own by using braised prime cuts and Duroc pork instead of ground beef and pork. The gnocchi are also my mother’s recipe, although I’ve tweaked the potato-to-flour ratio. They’re served with mushrooms, peas, and a brown butter–sage sauce; we fry the sage in butter to release all the aromatics. Then we top everything with stracciatella cheese and sage breadcrumbs.
Offering a free first course is really unique.
We want there to be a sense of value. It’s commonplace when you go to a proper restaurant in Italy that they’ll feed you something first. They’re small plates called spuntini, and there’s no charge.
How does the menu reflect your Chicago upbringing?
The Vesuvio is a Chicago staple. I was hesitant to put chicken on the menu, to be honest, because you don’t really see that in restaurants in Italy unless they’re in a tourist area. But I decided if I was going to have a chicken dish, I wanted it to represent where I was born and raised. There was a restaurant in the 1930s called Vesuvio, and that dish became very popular. It has since closed, but the recipe lives on in storied Italian-American restaurants like Tufano’s, Italian Village, and La Scarola.
What are your most popular dishes?
We sell a lot of steak, lamb, chicken, and cioppino, but our top three are probably the branzino, Bolognese, and ravioli with lobster. Our handmade ravioli are stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella cheese, and parsley, and we serve them with arrabbiata sauce and a cold-water lobster tail. Then we finish with arugula and lemon zest.
You’re also a sommelier. Tell me about your wine program.
We have a bottle list, and for wines by the glass, everything is $15. With my background, I know value, and I said, let’s just take out the guesswork and make those the same price. When you’re not choosing based on price, you’re choosing what you want—Cabernet? Pinot Noir? Merlot? It’s the same approach as offering the free first course—I want guests to focus less on price and more on the experience.
What do you want guests to take away from Toscana?
It’s a true dining experience, which is one of the reasons we have a dress code. It’s pretty simple—collared shirts, no flip-flops or workout clothes. And sharing stories is important and something I try to teach my employees. Telling stories is one of the oldest forms of entertainment, and it just makes the whole experience at Toscana that much better.
written by: christina barrueta
photographed by: luke irvin