Tre Luna—Italian for “three moons”—has many meanings to Brian and Erin Mooney. It is a play on their surname and a reference to their three children. Tre Luna also is the name of both their Italian-inspired restaurant in Hoover and their busy catering company in Birmingham. Soon those “moons” will be joined by a third, a retail market selling popular items from its sibling businesses like sauces and dips.

The restaurant, officially called Tre Luna Bar and Kitchen, has set the table for chef-driven local eateries in the kind of suburban setting where national chains otherwise dominate.

Brian Mooney’s resume includes cooking at Frank Stitt’s Bottega and serving as executive chef of the Greystone Country Club. Mooney’s menu highlights his cooking chops while also remaining approachable.

“Something Frank always used to preach: ‘Let the ingredients speak for themselves,’” Brian says. “All I’m there to do is take really great ingredients and make them shine.”

Open for lunch Wednesday through Friday, and dinner Monday through Saturday, the restaurant is tucked into The Village at Brock’s Gap center in West Hoover. But entering the inviting bar and dining area is like stepping into another world.

Tre Luna’s menus feature high-end dishes like beef carpaccio, spear-caught fish, and fresh pasta. But even standards like pizza and the signature burger show a chef’s level of attention to quality and detail.

Pizza dough and sauce are scratch-made, and pies are baked in a wood-burning oven. Many are topped with locally sourced ingredients, including gourmet Magic City Mushrooms from Birmingham. Burger meat is ground and the patties are shaped by the kitchen, which also bakes the buns and hand-cuts potatoes for sides of fries.

Even something as seemingly ordinary as chicken wings gets a 24-hour marinade followed by a slow-poach in duck fat for three hours during prep. Orders are finished in the wood-fired oven with Calabrian chiles, braised onions, and rosemary before they are tossed in a house-made lemon aioli.

Desserts, including the popular white chocolate bread pudding and English toffee pudding, also are made in-house. A whimsical collaboration, the Breakup Brookie, combines Tre Luna’s brownie with Emily Hall’s version of the locally famous chocolate-chunk Breakup Cookie.

Jonathan Brasher, the front-of-house manager and bar guru, prepares all the juices, tinctures, and other additions for Tre Luna’s cocktails. He is up on all the latest mixology magic, like clarifying brown whiskey to a clear liquor, the Mooneys say.

But of all the dishes on Tre Luna’s menu, Chicken Francese is Brian’s sentimental favorite. It was the first restaurant recipe he learned to cook, courtesy of a lesson from the chef who grew tired of making it daily for Brian’s pre-shift meal. He says he still enjoys cooking and eating it.

The dish is a menu mainstay, and the lemon-butter-white wine Francese sauce sometimes adorns specials like a recent version with Gulf snapper. “It sold out like that,” Erin says, snapping her fingers.

Opening an Italian family restaurant seemed inevitable for the couple. One side of Erin’s family traces its roots to Italy and ran Birmingham’s beloved VJ’s on the Runway restaurant. Brian, who started in the culinary business at age 14, has worked in several Italian restaurants including Bottega’s fine dining and café sides.

The couple even met while working in a restaurant in Florida, where Brian grew up and graduated from culinary school.

But several years after moving to the Birmingham area, they took a detour from any restaurant plans when offered a chance to buy a catering company. They plunged into the business of supplying lunches for pharmaceutical reps and food for corporate events, weddings, and galas. Tre Luna Catering will lead food preparation this fall for the Tum Tum Tree Foundation’s annual wine auction fundraiser to aid children.

Tre Luna Grocery is slated to open later this year in Birmingham, next to the catering headquarters on Fifth Avenue South. It will sell the greatest hits like spinach and artichoke dip, white chocolate bread pudding, braised beef short ribs, balsamic dressing, and pasta sauce.

When they opened Tre Luna Bar and Kitchen five years ago, the Mooneys broke norms by bringing fine-dining options to an area where the nearest Italian restaurant was Olive Garden. But they sensed their neighbors had a deep craving for local eateries, the kind where the owner always stops by tables to say hello.

That hunger was proven during the pandemic. When COVID closures prompted the restaurant to switch to catering mode, the staff created to-go plates and passed orders to customers through a patio window. Many people would sit down and eat at the patio tables, Erin says.

“We knew at that point we had made the right decision,” Brian says about opening in the ‘burbs versus Birmingham. “All of them were saying ‘We don’t want you to leave,’ and they were out here every single night. This neighborhood came out to make sure we survived.”

They’re still coming.