Women's Clothing Boutique in Hanahan, SC

HANAHAN — “Fire bread, meatballs, peppers. Hold linguine, beans, ribeye medium rare,” hollers the expeditor inside a new Italian restaurant 10 miles from downtown Charleston.

He stands between glowing heat lamps and a six-seat bar, where patrons listen as pans collide with cast-iron grates and begin to sizzle with oil and aromatic garlic. Next to the burners, warmth emanates from a wood-fired oven waiting to toast sourdough at 850 degrees.

Less than a foot from the chef's counter at Cane Pazzo, meatballs are doused in tomato sauce and sprinkled with Parmesan — the finishing touch to a recipe owner Mark Bolchoz has honed for years.

Next to the Charleston native, another chef transforms a tray of vivid orange, red and green peppers sourced from a Johns Island farm. Within minutes, using the oven’s high heat, they’re charred and glisten with a smooth sheen.

The Nardello peppers have the texture of shishitos but with a sweeter finish, the slender bulbs giving salty, acidic notes from crispy prosciutto, feta and a splash of sherry. The meatballs, for their part, are rolled with hardly any binder, the pork blending with beef to produce tender orbs that shine in their red coat.

That this is the best meatball I’ve cut into in the last year is more impressive if you’ve heard about the latest dining trend in town: Italian restaurants are opening in droves, each bringing their version of fresh pastas, Tuscan street snacks and American-inspired red sauce selections to the dinner table.

Cane Pazzo, located in a strip center between North Charleston and Goose Creek, might not be on diners’ radar as much as downtown newcomers Pelato, Volpe and Legami. But it should be, for the food Bolchoz is cooking in his first independent venture has personality, nuance and plenty of intrigue, with vegetables and heritage meats shining just as bright as the hand-rolled pastas.

Lowcountry ingredients, Italian techniques

My dining companions admitted they were skeptical when they pulled up to Cane Pazzo’s Yeamans Hall Road address.

The restaurant shares a parking lot with a Piggly Wiggly, a Mexican café and a garlic crab restaurant. The off-the-beaten-path location evokes thoughts of an old-school Italian joint, one where tables cloaked in white cloth might be filled with free bread and surrounded by large groups yelling over one another.

Cane Pazzo, they soon realized, is not that. It’s a restaurant for a date night, dinner with friends or early supper with the kids. Snag a reservation a week or two in advance, or slide into one of six seats at the chef’s counter for views of the culinary pros preparing food for the entire restaurant, which Bolchoz and his wife Ariana opened in June.

The debut came about a decade after Bolchoz cooked at The Grocery, a role that led to a fast ascent within Indigo Road Hospitality Group, owners of Indaco on Upper King Street in Charleston. He became the culinary director of Italian concepts for the company before leaving last year to pursue Cane Pazzo.

The restaurant marks a return to Hanahan for the family. Bolchoz’s grandfather operated a business in the area for more than 30 years and gave him his childhood nickname of "Mad Dog" — the English translation of Cane Pazzo. The chef, who met his wife at the Culinary Institute of America, describes the food he’s serving as Lowcountry ingredients by way of Italian techniques.

Open the door, stamped with Cane Pazzo’s bulldog logo, to find a bar pouring drinks with bourbon, lemon and a splash of Italian red wine — that’s A Horse with No Name ($14), a refreshing nod to a New York sour. Other cocktails blend tequila with blood orange; gin with amaro, lemon and honey.

Wine, selected by Ariana, is served by the glass, bottle or quartino — a small carafe — in the bar area and through a large archway in the adjacent dining room, decorated in rustic light browns and dark greens.

Tunes ranging from jazz to Billy Joel sound from the speakers as groups slide into a long copper-colored banquette that runs the length of the room beneath a wall of family photos. Pairs peruse stock paper menus split into four sections: appetizers, pastas, proteins and sides.

Tantalizing aromas and an intense heat drift from Cane Pazzo’s open kitchen to the dining room, whose elegance might catch you by surprise. The food more than matches the energetic enclave, whose noise level rises significantly during peak dinner hours.

It’s hard to blame diners for speaking loudly, for the menu, which at times strays from standard Italian or Italian-American fare, leaves room for plenty of discussion.

Bolchoz isn’t afraid to experiment, within reason, utilizing cuts like fish collar and vegetables not typically found in Italian cuisine. There are also plenty of classic appetizers and entrees for those weary of stepping too far outside of the box.

Servers well-versed in the selections will likely recommend starting with the sourdough bread ($8). Toasted until its crust crackles and center steams, the circular slice is topped with butter infused with Calabrian chilis and honey. Smoky, sweet and spicy flavors emerge, the texture reminiscent of pizza dough. If you can, save a piece for the sauces that await.

Guests can keep small and large plates to themselves or share with the group. I suggest the latter, for you’ll likely want to sample each of the handmade pastas.

DINING ROOM HOURS: 5-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday

PRICE: $$

COSTS: $8-$29

PARKING: Parking lot

Lumache ($24) noodles resemble scrunched-up rigatoni, the ridged pasta trapping a sausage ragu steeped in hot chili peppers. The snail-shaped shells have the al dente chew you read about in an Italian cookbook, and the spicy sauce is supplemented by sweet green peas.

The bowl might share the table with local shrimp linguine ($25), laced in a lemony sauce that's light but layered in green garlic and just the right amount of butter. Tarvin Seafood shrimp taste clean and sweet, each tangled in long, tender noodles. Parsley finishes the riff on a scampi, refreshing and decadent at once.

My memory of Cane Pazzo’s local shrimp pasta might be different than yours. In Bolchoz and chef de cuisine Alex Fagan’s latest interaction, the shellfish and jet black bucatini are tossed in spicy, citrusy butter and topped with herby breadcrumbs.

The shrimp set was among the selections to subtly shift before and after two recent visits. Fingers crossed that some version of the agnolotti ($25), a recipe Bolchoz has honed for years, sticks around for the long haul.

His take on the stuffed Piedmont pasta soaks up its rosy surroundings, the tomato sauce supporting sturdy dough erupting with the flavor of fresh corn bolstered by ricotta. The filling’s sweet center gets its creaminess from milking the cob by hand with a box grater, a trick Bolchoz picked up from his great-grandmother.

Take a bite, then a sip of Italian wine and sit back in your stylish chair or cushioned booth. This, you might say to yourself, is what Italian food is supposed to taste like.

Pork and beans like you've never had before

Cane Pazzo is exactly the type of Italian restaurant I seek out: comforting and innovative, with options that stretch well beyond just pasta and red sauce.

Check out the long beans ($8), their charred exterior tinted green or purple. Coated in fontina fondue and scattered with fried garlic for crunch, the Lowland Farms snappy beans cling to the sauce like fettuccine to alfredo. They’re tender enough to twirl on a fork, too.

Order the side dish alongside the pork chop ($29), which has been among the most popular dishes during Cane Pazzo’s first few months, Bolchoz said. The restaurant is sourcing six to seven heritage hog loins per week and selling 15 to 20 chops per night.

The Keegan-Filion Farm meat is sliced relatively thin, revealing a juicy center cooked just right, a spicy-sweet jelly made in-house using local peppers seeps into the meat. Allow the silence that comes after a satisfying bite of food to settle in as you taste the fried sage that floats on top for a crispy rush of warmth.

As I finished the last few pieces and waited for a nostalgic dish of Italian mint chocolate chip ice cream with Oreo crumbles to arrive, I began to consider how Cane Pazzo fits into the local dining scene.

The Italian food here is among the best in the area, with Bolchoz putting a modern spin on familiar flavors. Returning guests have demonstrated an appreciation for what Cane Pazzo has brought to the community, with Bolchoz saying people have stopped him at church or the grocery store to thank him for opening the restaurant. But this is only the beginning of the eatery's story.