Belmont Avenue’s new organic restaurant is set to open next summer

There’s more to New York chef and restaurateur Siggy Sollitto than her plans to open an organic and local restaurant in Charlotte early next summer.

If you want to get to know her now, you should watch the clip of her appearance on Ted Allen’s Food Network show “Chopped” in 2010. Faced with the mysterious ingredient – the rattlesnake – she managed to whip up a Sicilian-inspired salad with capers. , olives, pears and snake that judge Alex Guarnaschelli loved but were eliminated when she ran out of time and made only one plate instead of the three needed for all the judges.

“It was about making a decision with our heart or making a decision with our head,” Guarnaschelli said. “Your food was delicious, but a competition is a competition. (Sollitto was able to try again in a rematch in 2011, but was overcome by difficulty preparing lamb hearts.)

Sollitto, owner of New York restaurant Siggy’s Good Food, has obtained approval for his zoning change and is a lead to open his new restaurant at 1001 Belmont Ave. early next summer. While its New York City location on Elizabeth Street in NoHo is a full-service restaurant, its Charlotte location will be smaller at 1,500 square feet, she says, with counter service and a rooftop lounge. She calls the menu “comfort food with an organic twist” and says her plan here is to be “a wonderful cafe”.

It will open in May “if I can push myself,” she said. “But realistically, June.”

Sollitto, born in Israel, specializes in organic and local foods with touches from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It has been in New York for 24 years and opened in 2005 on Henry Street in Brooklyn. This location closed in 2015, but it continued with the Manhattan location. After her sister moved to Charlotte and started as a family, she visited here and fell in love with Charlotte and the Belmont neighborhood.

“It feels like a village,” she said. “The sidewalks are small. While she plans to keep her New York restaurant open for as long as she can, she plans to move to Charlotte full time.

“New York is not ideal for small businesses,” she said. “Charlotte is a good city to be.”