» Osteria returns:

The former Osteria del Mondo restaurant, which closed on Milwaukee’s lower east side in 2011, will reopen as simply Osteria at 330 E. Kilbourn Ave.

Remember Osteria del Mondo? It’s coming back and will be known simply as Osteria.

“I am extremely excited. And it’s about time,” said chef and co-owner Marc Bianchini.

Osteria del Mondo closed on Milwaukee’s lower east side in 2011. It was in the Knickerbocker Hotel, 1028 E. Juneau Ave., for 16 years.

Bianchini will reopen his Italian restaurant with his wife, Marta, and business partner Daniel Schwartz at 330 E. Kilbourn Ave., they announced Friday. The restaurant is due in spring or summer 2018, Marc Bianchini said.

It’s part of the renovation of the 330 Kilbourn building, previously known as the Plaza East towers.

Osteria del Mondo was a fine-dining Italian restaurant in a formal, traditional style, and a regular on Journal Sentinel Top 30 lists. Although Bianchini intended to reopen it in a matter of months after the closure in 2011, a new location didn’t materialize until now.

Formal and traditional won’t be the new Osteria, Bianchini indicated. “It’s going to be very different,” he said.

“The food, the taste is going to be identical,” he said. “The ambience, the style in which it’s going to be presented, will be completely different.”

Although he declined to elaborate on the menu and décor, he said, “It’s going to be more modern and what diners are looking for now.”

It will be on the ground floor of Tower 1 of 330 Kilbourn, at E. Kilbourn Ave. and N. Milwaukee St. The restaurant space has three sides of glass walls. “You’re going to see the restaurant from every which way,” Bianchini said.

The restaurant and bar likely will be able to seat no more than 100.

It will open for dinner at first and eventually add lunch, Bianchini said.

Bianchini, a native New Yorker, trained and worked at the late, influential Italian restaurant San Domenico. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he also worked at restaurants in Italy.

The Bianchinis operate the Cuban restaurant Cubanitas on N. Milwaukee St. (with a second location opening in Oak Creek) and the downtown wine bar Indulge.

Although the couple will be working on two new restaurants at once, “We’ve been working behind the scenes, getting all the structure in place” for Osteria, he said.