At Campione Roman Kitchen, in the Paradise Valley, the Italian ethos of working with local producers, farmers, and purveyors reigns. Under the Big Sky, the restaurant highlights the bounty found in the region. Their space, located at the corner of Main and Callender Streets, is an intimate eatery serving local meats, house-made pasta, and seasonal vegetable dishes.
Owners Anthony Sferra, Josh Adams, and Jeff Galli met in Livingston. Sferra says of their meeting and then deciding to start their business, “Ill-fated stars.”
Josh Adams is the executive chef, while Anthony Sferra helps in the kitchen and oversees their large production. Jeff Galli runs the front of the house, handles the finances, and organizes special events.
“We didn’t know each other prior to this, and we ended up working together briefly at another place in town. We were all interested in doing our own project after working for other people for our whole lives. We chatted about it for a long time, and then one day, we walked past this space, and it had a for lease sign on the window.”
The previous tenants wanted to get out of their lease, and Galli shares, “They asked us to take on the lease immediately, which was December 2019, and at the time, there was no indication of what was to come.”
“But when COVID hit,” Adams says, “it really limited what we could do.”
The building that Campione occupies once housed a mercantile in the 19th century. Later, it was occupied by a drugstore and various grocery stores and eateries.
“For the longest time, this corner shop has always been either a bodega or a little Italian shop. It was a pizza shop before a little bakery, and we felt that this space was perfect for a little Italian kitchen. Originally, we were looking for a more laid-back setting, a counter service sort of situation, and have a little grocery,” Adams shares.
With the onset of COVID, their original casual bar-style dining could not happen with the rules of social distancing. “So, it really forced us to evolve our program to more of a sit-down, dine-in process with actual servers and wine service and doing a little bit more of elevated cuisine.”
The restaurant took on the name Campione. Galli explains, “It literally translates to ‘the champion’ and the idea of that space being the champion for the community, and for local agriculture, for the reputation of restaurants in Livingston, for working with other businesses.” “It was a champion for us in the sense that this was all our first restaurants and our own opportunity to take ownership over something.”
When starting Campione, “what we didn’t want to do is follow anyone else’s rules,” Galli shares. The partners wanted to honor the idea of the Roman kitchen “that didn’t just take place in one geographic area but reached over a few continents and took inspiration from many different civilizations.”
Campione is “nurturing the ingredient and choosing really great ingredients, and then getting out of the way, not being too fussy about it, and having some fun with it. We are more interested in using the best of Montana’s ingredients and its bounty,” Galli explains.
The auspicious name led Campione to be named one of America’s 50 Best Restaurants by the New York Times, and Adams was recognized in 2024 and 2025 as Best Chef: Mountain from the James Beard Foundation.
The nods brought partnerships with purveyors who hesitated to provide products when the business started. Having a good reputation in the culinary scene also attracted potential employees who wanted to work for a restaurant recognized for its good food and leadership. Adams finds humility in the attention: “I was not expecting it. I always just thought we’re just a small kitchen in a small town, Livingston. I'm super proud of the whole crew and everyone who’s helped bring this place to what it has become.”
For Galli, he hopes diners are not coming to Campione just because of the awards. “It’s nice when people come to a restaurant to spend time with each other and to broaden their relationships with the people they dine with. It’s less fun for us when they’re coming to check out, do we live up to the hype?”
After setting up a test kitchen, the team set out to make the perfect meatball. “So it started from there. If we were going to open an Italian place, we needed to have a good meatball. So it was about a three- or four-month process of testing recipes and working with different ranchers, trying to find some good local beef and pork,” Adams shares.
Adams wanted to keep the recipes simple and clean. “It was very important to me and all of us here, just trying to be sustainable to our environment, our economy.”
To keep prices down and continue paying their employees good wages, the partners decided to lease a 2,500-square-foot space a block away. Right now, it is taking on the name “The Commissary.”
“The Commissary” is “Just a nickname currently, because it’s connected to our commissary kitchen. We’re still working on the finer details of what we’re going to call it, but we took this over mainly because we really wanted that kitchen. It came with a really cool little storefront and we’ve been slowly, over the course of time, about a year now, piecing together what this project can be,” Sferra says.
Currently, “we do some wholesale cooking for a friend’s restaurant in town as well.”
“In many ways, we are going back to what we had originally thought might be fun to do together, and then some. This is a therapeutic space. This is like our clubhouse,” Sferra says, equipping the area with an arcade machine and a television with old VHS tapes. “We’re going to just have fun with it. Play the music loud, have everybody be a little more boisterous, and feel like it’s a place to just relax and have fun.”
The kitchen had been purposely built by the previous owner for large production. “He had multiple kitchen spaces in this town and was branching out to do more things.” “We’ve got a 40-gallon tilt-skilled in there, a couple of large kettles for sauces. We bought in ovens and extra convection ovens for our baking program because they weren’t really doing that out of there before, and it’s a big deal for us. So, we introduced that. One of the really focal points of us wanting it was this front space comes with a large open fire oven that we have been having fun playing with,” Sferra explains.
In the kitchen, having more refrigeration space and cooking equipment allows for producing “anything large format.” The bigger area provides for making sauces, vinaigrette, aioli, and ricotta. Batch roasting and baking can also be completed, along with some smoking.
At Campione, “now what happens there is mainly the day-to-day prep,” Adams says.
For now, Sferra shares of Campione after all these years and after receiving national recognition, “It’s a place you should be able to go, not just for special occasions. We kept returning to that idea of real food for real people. I think we have achieved that. It wouldn’t be the same if it were three times the size or I had a menu that was twice as long. It just doesn’t make sense.”
