🍷 For Sogno Toscano, a popular importer of premium Italian ingredients used by chefs nationwide, its new Arcadia wine bar and market is more than an expansion. It’s a return to where the company quietly began.
Located on the northwest corner of Indian School and 40th Street, the east Phoenix outpost marks the brand’s fifth lifestyle café and first in Arizona, but its roots run deep in the Valley.
Co-founders and childhood friends Pietro Brembilla and Brian Persico have operated Sogno Toscano’s U.S. headquarters from the Valley since the mid-2000s, supplying restaurants across the country with Parmigiano Reggiano, olive oils, cured meats, pastas, and other Italian staples.
When the pandemic halted restaurant orders in 2020, the duo made a bold pivot: opening a retail market in New York to move product. That experiment quickly evolved into a wine bar, café, and – unexpectedly – a live showroom for chefs.
The model took off, with additional locations in New York and Los Angeles. Phoenix, Brembilla’s longtime home, was the natural next step.
The new Arcadia café is their most refined version yet, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, pouring Italian wines, and offering a curated market of imports, pottery, cutting boards, and glassware. While residents get a new all-day Italian hangout, the space also doubles as a tasting room for chefs and restaurateurs.
And Brembilla hints this won’t be the last. He sees room for another Sogno Toscano in north Scottsdale or the East Valley.
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