Bakery Four starting Italian dinner concept

When Shawn Bergin can find the time, his favorite thing to do in his Tennyson Street bakery is to toy with savory creations, whether for staff meals or weekly specialties. This week, for example, Bakery Four is offering al pastor rolls, pasta and sandwiches as lunch specials.

“We just don’t do anything at the bakery after 2 o’clock,” Bergin said. “It just sits empty, and I’ve always thought about doing dinner pop-ups there.”

This spring, Bergin and his wife and restaurant co-owner Alex Urdanick plan to do just that, using the building, at 4150 Tennyson St., at night with a new rustic Italian dinner concept. “The goal is to be an all-day breakfast-into-lunch-into-dinner cafe,” he said.

The concept, which he’s considering naming Night Off, will offer shared plates of rotating stuffed pastas, like anolini, tortelloni and agnolotti, as well as house-extruded pastas, including gemelli with brown butter alfredo, lumache and mafaldine. The menu will also boast entrees like lasagna bolognese, sides of fresh sourdough bread and affordable bottles of wine.

“Like the bakery, we’ll do everything in-house,” Bergin said. “We’ve built a couple of relationships with local farmers and meat distributors to get really quality product that we can eventually merge with some of the pastry and bread we’ve been doing.

Night Off, named after the only free time that bakers get — “besides sleep of course,” Bergin said — will be reservation-only with 40 seats. Bergin plans to test out the menu with family and friends in the next couple of weeks before setting an opening date.

“My favorite restaurants in town are Annette and Hop Alley,” Bergin said. “I love how they approach elevated dining in a casual way, which is something we want to do.”

Bergin, a New York native, has been making his own pasta for the past 10 years. Diners or passersby will be able to watch him extrude and prep fresh pasta at an open table in the dining room, which they eventually plan to glass in as its own room.