Beginning a new restaurant is a lot like getting married again. There are personalities to mesh and new digs to arrange.

New china, flatware and glassware to choose. And there are high hopes all around that one's partner will be there for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, and hopefully for better and richer.

Chef Greg Alauzen and his partners David and Joe Lamatrice have tied the knot. The latter also are involved in the Clark Bar & Grill on the North Side and Caffe Amante, Downtown. Cioppino, a seafood and chophouse, is the new venture and, fingers crossed, will open Aug. 15.

		Hours Cioppino's kitchen hours will be 4 to 10 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., 4 to 11 p.m. Fri., 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Bar areas and small plates available late night. Free parking, with valet parking Wed.-Sun. Reservations suggested: 412-281-6593.

The site of the eatery is new to most people. Traveling on Smallman Street, turn toward the Allegheny River at 23rd Street. The big brick building is the urban chic Cork Factory. Go to the railroad tracks and brake. That's the place, on the far corner of the building: Cioppino, with its front door a few feet from the railroad tracks.

Chef Alauzen's star shone bright in Pittsburgh at the Steelhead Brasserie and Wine Bar and at Eleven, but we've missed him the past few years while he was in residence at Nevillewood Country Club and tending his 65-acre farm in Eighty Four. After 26 years in the business, he still cuts a handsome figure, and his hair is still fashionably moussed and spiked, although it now shows streaks of gray.

A few weeks ago, he led a hard-hat tour of the 160-seat space. "Cioppino won't have one of those 'open kitchens,'" he says with a laugh. "We'll be back here working hard to handle the four main rooms. The private dining room will handle about 20 guests; the main dining room will hold 60 with a corner wine area. The bar features cork panels designed to keep the connection to the original Armstrong Cork factory.

"The cigar bar is bound to be popular. There's a separate entry to the room, which features a huge humidor and 13-foot doors. This is where you can sit in a high-back leather chair with a drink and a smoke and order up a huge steak or one of our small plates.

"The bar is on the corner of 23rd at the tracks, looking southwest. It will have its own entrance and a small plates menu. Isn't it great? Bet you never saw Pittsburgh's Downtown skyline from this angle."

True. Photographers, take note.

The restaurant will also operate Il Mercato, a specialty market that will include an espresso bar and eat-in deli. "Our market will offer prepared foods, our own breads, groceries, chickens and deli goods," says Chef Alauzen.

"Our next-door neighbors on Railroad Street live in the lofts and condos here, and it should be a great convenience for them. And down the line, a marina will be built, so we can expect boaters to come from the rivers."

The menu is Tuscan-inspired American cuisine -- basically, a "seafood and chophouse," says Chef Alauzen. "We'll have four to six steak options with the same for fish, along with a few pastas, lamb and pork dishes. The house specialty, of course, will be cioppino."

Which raises the question, so what is a "cioppino" anyway?

See the accompanying story.