Homey, gracious and tasty, Via Cassia worth a trip to Hudson
Published 06/10/2025 by Times Union by Susie Davidson Powell
“If you squint, it’s Italian,” says chef Gaetano Arnone about the menu at Via Cassia. Gaetano and his wife, Meigan Arnone, opened their doors last year in the former Ca’Mea space on Warren Street in Hudson, determined to offer the welcoming trattoria feel they knew from living in Italy.
They’ve succeeded: Mediterranean flavors and other influences play out in relaxed ways across the menu in scallops with ’nduja, miso butter with cone-shaped gigli pasta and preserved lemons in a piccata. The restaurant’s Italian roots cleverly pull together the threads of a story that weaves from a start in Southern California to Hawaii, New York City, northern Italy and back.
Via Cassia
Address :214 Warren St., Hudson
Prices: Food, $15 to $38; wines by the glass, $12 to $16; by the bottle, $46 to $52; cocktails, $15
Hours: 5 to 9 p.m Wednesday to Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday
Info: 838-667-4338 and viacassiahudson.com
Etc.: Street parking. ADA-accessible.
Thanks to this, a main course of two tiny quail, stacked, bronzed and lacquered with fra diavolo barbecue sauce, causes us to coo over every bite. This is Italy by way of Detroit — a memory of barbecue chicken slow-cooked over bricks and the front end of an old Ford by Gaetano’s Italian grandfather, and a taste known only to Gaetano’s father. “Was it red? Was it orange? Was it sweet?” Gaetano would ask, trying to chase the flavor of some elusive spicy Italian barbecue sauce. It wasn’t until he made the connection to Detroit, where they lived, and with it Motown and Detroit hot sauce, that he went all in with Calabrian chiles, the bergamot notes of Italicus (an Italian liqueur) and, in a surprising last-minute addition, fresh mint. “That’s it,” confirmed his dad. So it’s here on the menu, far from any Italian classic, capturing some spicy-citrus sauce that binds three generations.
Much of the menu reads traditionally Italian. All pastas are made in-house, shapes pushed through an extruder, soft and fresh, never dried, and sometimes filled. Plates thrill with unexpected textures tugged in unexpected sweet-salty directions. As a native Californian, Gaetano draws on the bounty of local Hudson Valley farms but imports the phenomenal Black Tuscan kale for what may be the best leaf salad of my life. Its darkly cruciferous leaves are lightly sweetened with honey and black truffle vinaigrette, while ricotta salata adds natural salt.
There are salumi and formaggi to mix and match to share. We have just one, mortadella tonnato, admiring the loose, soft pink folds dotted with shaved baby fennel and crisp fried capers in scattered pops of salt and crunch. There’s a backstory of how Gaetano came to be a chef that starts at his father’s Italian restaurant in California and leads to a year in Italy learning whole-animal butchery from famed butcher Dario Cecchini. He could make the salumi, and does make guanciale in large quantities, but he buys the rest from a trusted Italian friend, Felippo Gambassi, who opened a stateside curing facility in Richmond, Va., to avoid strict import rules. The Terra di Siena mortadella is out of this world.
Gaetano’s blissfully simple “Tre P” spaghetti has nothing more than Californian bianco di Napoli tomatoes (pomodoro), pecorino, pepperoncini and a glug of olive oil; cavatelli is made with grana arso, a burnt flour from scorched wheat fields that lends campfire minerality to the dough, and it’s tossed with housemade sausage and wilted dandelion leaves. This is the dish I’ve been thinking about ever since.
I could say the same about a Lavazza tiramisu, served in a cappuccino cup. Translated simply to “pick me up,” in northern Italy, tiramisu is the cooler breakfast choice when it’s too hot for morning Joe. Forget a dusting of unsweetened chocolate powder; this delicate, creamy dessert is neither too cakey nor too loose, with a tonguecoating two-millimeter powder topping. Light but decadent, it’s the finale to choose, even if a panna cotta with blackberries is equally good.
The space itself has a relaxed, convivial energy, with the usual chatter of a busy Italian restaurant and table lamps spilling low light. Meigan’s background in fine art and interior design found a new project in lightening and brightening the restaurant with white paint, sanding tables and reupholstering chairs in large red-andwhite check. To recreate the mood of the 400-year-old kitchen in the Italian artist’s loft where they lived during the pandemic, custom shelves bear the antique pots, pans and large wicker bags Meigan scored in Italian flea markets, and rugs soften walls in rustic touches that define the mood.
Service is the secret ingredient. Gaetano’s background includes 10 years in New York City as the opening Italian butcher for the first Eataly store and later hired to Babbo in garde manger before progressing to chef de cuisine. While living on the Corsini farm winery, they hosted private dining and cooking classes, practicing the art of hospitality. It shows up here in unhurried service, tableside stories, pours of a favored olive oil and a wine list full of bottles they love, including the Corsini wines from their Italian home. In a follow-up call, Gaetano said when he closed his eyes to imagine what their restaurant would look, sound and feel like, it was this, matching the philosophy of slow food.
They’ve kept the mostly local staff from Ca’Mea, many third- and fourth-generation Hudsonians, including general manager Isabela Macher and bar manager Stephanie Howard, whose cocktails include a riff on a bourbon Manhattan with artichoke-based Cynar for vegetal notes. Like the Arnones, pastry chef Emerson McCafferty has California roots.
The menu has seasonal tweaks and a twice-yearly change. In their first year, they noticed many guests are familiar faces, returning for the comfort of already-tried favorite plates. Among those is a now-infamous side of roasted baby carrots I had heard about a dozen times. Finally, I get to try them, sweet from roasting and lightly dressed in honey and pink peppercorn vinaigrette. Whether you’re dining inside or on their sunny patio, you’d best put in an order.
After more than 10½ years of writing for the Times Union, this is Susie Davidson Powell’s final restaurant review. She will have a farewell column and discuss her future plans next week.
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