How do you hide an Italian restaurant? Behind a secret door in a gelato shop.

Vita, Massimo and Ana Boni’s tiny gelato parlor near Rittenhouse Square, has been harboring a secret since opening last fall.

The answer lies behind a Ferrari red refrigerator door to the left of the counter. On May 30, the Bonis will open a 100-seat Italian restaurant behind the gelateria in what had been the dining room of Branzino, which closed in early 2022. In keeping with the air of mystery, diners will head inside through the gelateria, and are encouraged to exit through the rear patio, following the side alley back out to 17th Street.

The couple won’t allow photos of the bar and dining room before the opening and have insisted that those attending a preview dinner switch off their phone cameras. They say they are aiming for a mellow vibe, with low lighting, a bar, and a brick patio beneath string lights and a canopy of trees. “Obviously I have an idea in my mind of what it will be, but it’s not me that dictates that,” Massimo Boni said.

Vita is the restaurant debut for the Bonis, college sweethearts who met in New York. He is 30, Italian-born, and raised in Radnor; she is also 30, Venezuelan-born, and raised in Miami. The menu includes house-made pasta and entrees such as bistecca alla Fiorentina, chicken al Mattone, and sea bass puttanesca. Starters will be $8 to $18, pasta dishes $21 to $26, and entrees $32 to $42. The drink list will include an all-Italian wine list and cocktails; the bar will be available to walk-ins.

Five years ago, Massimo Boni was an engineer and construction manager for a company in New York that oversaw the build-out of the posh Estiatorio Milos at New York’s Hudson Yards, which opened in 2019. The day after it opened, he and Ana, then working in finance, went to experience it. “If you point to anything in that restaurant, I could tell you a story about it — all the materials, the laborers to the vendors, to the suppliers, to the designers, the architects, the owner himself,” Boni said. “Being able to go there, sit down, and then enjoy the space for what it was meant to was so fulfilling and so gratifying. That hammered the idea of hospitality.”

A year later, when the pandemic hit, Boni enrolled in culinary school. He worked at his day job, as well as an externship three days a week from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the luxe coastal Italian restaurant Marea on Central Park South. That gave him the confidence to do what he calls “a career 180″ with a move home to Philadelphia.

“The plan was always to do an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia,” Boni said. “Obviously, Philadelphia has millions of Italian restaurants, so how could I differentiate myself and do it a little bit different? When I stumbled upon this location, it seemed like an opportunity that was too good to be true. Most times it usually is, but we wanted to figure out a way to make the space work.”

It was Ana’s idea to do what they call the “gelato speakeasy,” allowing the couple to generate income from desserts while applying for their liquor license and building the restaurant.

The Bonis negotiated for several months with Luan Toto, the former owner of Branzino, who still owns the building at 261 S. 17th St. They were close to a deal but banks were turning them down, Massimo said. Without a loan, they couldn’t proceed with construction. “It got a point where the ball was in my court,” he said. “It was the weight of regret versus the weight of failure.” Shortly after signing the lease, they were approved for a loan by what Boni said was the 100th bank they approached.

The next bit of serendipity was meeting Matthew Cocco, an experienced gelato maker, just as the dessert-maker they had originally hired moved away. Cocco signed on not only to make gelato but as a business partner.

Through Maria Jose Hernández of Autana restaurant in Ardmore, they met the executive chef, Juan Luis Urdaneta, a Venezuela native who opened Flora, an Italian restaurant in Bogotá, before immigrating to the United States. Besides the classics such as carbonara, cacio e pepe, and Amatriciana, he managed to cinch the job with his own takes on bottoni and balanzoni.

The restaurant, whose Resy reservations open May 24, will operate from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Gelateria hours will remain the same for now (opening at noon Tuesday through Sunday).