Charlotte’s best new chef is cooking up more than just pasta at Optimist Hall
At ESO Artisanal Pasta in Optimist Hall on a recent Thursday night, the earth moved.
I had been invited to a sneak preview of chef AJ Sankofa’s new tasting menu. There was pasta to be sure, but there was so much more. In particular, there was lion’s mane mushroom.
The mushroom, good for the brain, was marinated in dashi and sesame, seared and then pressed down to remove the liquid. On top, leeks braised in butter, the freshest asparagus and sauce verte made from mint, tarragon and parsley. It gave the appearance of a juicy steak.
It was a simple vegetable dish, but a blockbuster one that had the effect of making my toes curl inward, as I winced in delight. To go with it, Cantine Russo “Contrada Crasa” Etna Rosso — a red wine that served the most successful pairing of wine to food that I’ve ever had. The whole thing was so good, in fact, that, as a food critic, I did whatever the hell a devil does and decided I had to write about it.
The earth moved. Speechless, I called AJ over and offered him a fist bump.
ESO’s origin story
AJ owns ESO Artisanal Pasta with his wife, chef Kristina Gambarian, whom he met in New York City.
Kristina is from Ukraine and first came to the U.S. on a temporary work visa program, where, following in her family’s footsteps in the food industry, she worked various odd kitchen jobs, including a stint at Red Robin during which she made 800 burgers at a Beyoncé concert.
At the end of the four-month work program, Kristina decided to stay in the U.S., and she hopped around from temporary job to temporary job until she finally landed in a high-end kitchen in Hudson Yards. The training was fierce, but Kristina put in the time until she could work confidently at the various kitchen stations.
As she moved around from salads to desserts to more complex stations like risotto and pasta, she eventually met one of the new chefs in the kitchen, AJ, who was somewhere in the corner cutting fish. A couple of weeks later, Kristina noticed that AJ had just disappeared.
As it turns out, AJ had gone to Italy.
A chef’s work in Italy
AJ had never really been interested in food in the first place.
His palate had always leaned more toward chicken fingers, pizza and fries. In fact, it was a friend who got him to work in his first restaurant in New Jersey. AJ was working front of the house, starting as a busboy and making his way up to service captain, and earning good money to boot.
But something about the kitchen began calling to him. He loved the drive it required, loved looking into the kitchen to see everyone heads down and working the same. To AJ, it was like an orchestra. So he approached the Hudson Yards chef, and that chef gave him the chance to work in the kitchen, where, when Kristina met him, he was quietly cutting fish in the corner.
By that time, unbeknownst to Kristina, AJ had already set his sights on Italy. Much to the chagrin of his parents, too, who didn’t want the chef’s life for him. With money he had saved, AJ dropped out of college to attend culinary school in Italy.
AJ worked as much as he could during culinary school to gain as much experience as possible because he knew he lacked the skills many of his classmates had. He even learned the language.
His internships were hard fought, but they began shaping him into the chef that he is today: meticulous, thoughtful, knowledgeable not only of wine but also of terroir, and, most importantly, how to bring it all together for something magical.
School and internships would lead AJ to Ristorante Larossa in Alba, an area in Italy famous for white truffles. He was working in that kitchen when the restaurant earned its first Michelin star. When visa requirements meant that AJ eventually had to return to the States, he went back to the Hudson Yards restaurant, where this time, he ran the pasta station.
He may or may not have taught Kristina how to make risotto the “correct” way. One night, AJ missed his last train back to New Jersey, and in the face of a $189 Uber bill, Kristina offered him the couch at her place in Brooklyn. The only catch? She had just moved in, so AJ would have to put the couch together himself.
This is how the future married couple officially met.
Pivoting into Food Network
ESO Artisanal Pasta was born out of the long days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when both AJ and Kristina were laid off from Hudson Yards and they both decided to pivot.
The two moved to Morristown, New Jersey, and Kristina began baking. (These days she’s known for her tiramisu.) They would deliver her baked goods around Morristown, for special occasions such as Mother’s Day, and then one day AJ suggested they do the same thing but with pasta.
A friend of theirs allowed them to set up shop in her restaurant’s dining room, which would have otherwise been vacant during the worst of the pandemic, and from there, AJ and Kristina sold frozen pastas and sauces that people could pick up and prepare at home.
Instagram was their only way to get the word out, but that didn’t prevent AJ and Kristina from being overwhelmed at the support of the droves of people who would show up, clamoring for pasta.
Success meant that a year later, as COVID-19 became the new normal and shops started to reopen, AJ and Kristina could open their own storefront. This was ESO Artisanal Pasta’s first iteration. When an unscrupulous business associate stole money out of the couple’s business account, forcing them to close ESO, the community rallied their support and raised funds on GoFundMe to keep it open.
But COVID-19 had messed with their business model. As shops reopened, fewer people were wanting to stay home and cook, and given that AJ and Kristina were making pastas and sauces specifically created to be prepared at home, their business started to suffer.
So they pivoted once again, this time to private parties. This meant being constantly booked out, even as they expanded to do weddings and catering. During this time, AJ and Kristina would host “secret dinners,” where ticket holders were only told of the location on the day of the event. They proved to be immensely popular.
TV also came calling. The Food Network invited the two onto “The Great Food Truck Race,” which they initially thought was a joke because they hadn’t heard of the show before, but they soon found themselves in California for a month to film. And then, they invited AJ onto an episode of “Chopped.”
Still, the brick-and-mortar business suffered. Almost serendipitously, however, was a trip that AJ and Kristina took back home to Charlotte to visit AJ’s mother. While they were here, they heard about a place called Optimist Hall and got a heads up that there might soon be space for them. They went to see the space and could immediately tell that it would help them to realize their dream of opening a restaurant.
Back in New Jersey, they closed the original ESO in December 2023 and spent most of 2024 focusing on their private events. By October, they announced to everyone’s surprise that a new ESO would open up in Charlotte.
On Aug. 8, 2025, ESO Artisanal Pasta officially opened at Optimist Hall.
ESO’s new tasting menu
In late spring, the four seats perched at the counter on the left side of ESO’s Optimist Hall stall will be reserved for invitation-only tasting menus. Wine pairings will be offered as optional, and guests are guaranteed not to leave hungry.
Kristina will tackle primarily front-of-house duties, while the dishes will be 100% AJ.
If these meals are anything like the menu I previewed, the earth will move, and there will be pasta, to be sure.
If you’re lucky, then you might have the ravioli that AJ made for me, and may it be as groundbreaking as the version I had that night.
The dough of the ravioli has a higher egg content, in a style that AJ picked up in Alba, Italy. It’s stuffed generously with squash that had been roasted with coffee. On top, braised radishes and a chapeau of fried Swiss chard. The addition of a deeply hued wine reduction, like balsamic vinegar from another world, tames what could have been a dish that ate too sweet.
Together with the wine, which for this course was a Pala “Soprasole” Vermentino di Sardegna, and which, it must be said, had its own ideas as to what constitutes greatness, the ravioli sent me straight into the stratosphere, from where I looked down and saw myself sobbing plaintively in my seat at my empty plate.
It called for another fist bump.
And it called for the unmistakable conclusion at the end of the meal, that AJ Sankofa, a man of few words but of sensational talent, is the best new chef in Charlotte.
ESO Artisanal Pasta
Location: Optimist Hall, 1115 N Brevard St, Suite D, Charlotte, NC 28206
Cuisine: Pasta, Italian
Instagram: @esopastaclt
