Less than a year after opening, Pasta Italia is closing.
The last day the restaurant will be open is Saturday.
"Unfortunately, the business was not quite what we expected it to be, so we are kind of forced to close," Laura Derrick, the owner's wife, who also works at the restaurant, said in a phone message.
She couldn't be immediately reached again Friday afternoon.
Businessman and chef Michele Doto opened the restaurant last September in the basement of the Tallan Building on M.L. King Boulevard, according to Nooga.com archives.
For one more day, the restaurant will serve authentic, homemade Italian cuisine that Doto cooks himself.
Doto, who has spent the last two decades working in the restaurant business, had been operating Pasta Italia in Biloxi, Miss., when Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything—his house and restaurant, he told Nooga.com last year.
After the hurricane, he and his family needed to relocate, and the only place they knew to go was Collierville, Tenn., because they had family there.
Doto reopened Pasta Italia there, but eventually relocated to Chattanooga and brought the restaurant here.
