Even the owners aren't sure about the exact meaning of Bada Bing, the quirky name for the newest restaurant in the Heights.

Bada Bing Italian Bistro, which opened June 2, is tucked behind the red-white-and-black Verizon Wireless building at Main Street and Hilltop Road.

The phrase is Italian-American slang, said chef and owner Peter Orrantia, who lives in the Heights.

"We want people to get the food fast. So, bada bing! Here it is," he said.

His partner, Adam Kimmet, president and owner of Cellular Plus/Verizon Wireless, said the phrase often is linked to a famous TV series.

"We get a lot of people thinking it came from 'The Sopranos,' but it's not," he said.

During the restaurant's shakeout cruise, Kimmet, who manages more than 30 cellular phone stores in Montana, Wyoming and Oregon, was busing tables and chatting up customers to get feedback.

From the pistachio-colored chairs to homemade pizzas cooked over wood flames, this urban Italian bistro is the product of eight years of dreaming by Orrantia, who managed The Olive Garden in Billings and Frontier Pies in Bozeman. Billings has at least three Italian restaurants with the Tuscan farmhouse look, so Orrantia chose a modern Italian look.

"There's another side to Italy, and that's Ferrari. High fashion," he said.

Like at Grains of Montana, customers order at a counter, take a number and wait for servers to bring the food to their table. The 4,900-square-foot restaurant also has a drive-up window for coffee drinks and takeout food that's ordered in advance.

While traveling in California years ago, Orrantia ate at an Italian restaurant in a nondescript building that offered only three choices. The food and atmosphere were mediocre, but he cooked up a business plan.

"If you added more choice and put some style into this thing, you might have a winner," he said. "Now with a beautiful building, we hope we have a winner."

Choice, speed, price

On its third day, Bada Bing had more than 50 customers for lunch and all the tables were full.

Lockwood school administrator Mike Sullivan said he liked his meatballs and spaghetti; his son, Logan, ate most of his cheese pizza. That said, they voted for more.

"We still need more restaurants in the Heights, don't you think?" Mike Sullivan said.

The menu, written first in Italian and then English, offers soups, salads and 10 pastas with half a dozen basic sauces and toppings such as meatballs, Italian sausage and grilled shrimp. The lasagna and pizzas are cooked in a 750-degree wood-fired oven.

After refining his concept, Orrantia found financial backers, who backed out when the recession hit. So he hooked up with Kimmet, who was looking for a restaurant to fill in land east of his cellular phone store.

"I had quite a few bites, but when Peter came to me with his concept about a Bing's, I loved it," Kimmet said.

When the smelter was booming in Orrantia's hometown of Great Falls, he said the city and the neighboring town of Black Eagle hosted some of Montana's best Italian restaurants, so that was the cuisine he liked.

Orrantia recently managed The Wingate by Wyndham Hotel off of Zoo Drive on the West End. That long commute for a meal, plus pleas from Heights friends, convinced him to open another restaurant on the east end of Billings.

"There's lots of food in the Heights, but not a lot of choice," he said. "I hate to say that with all my restaurant friends, but at least there's no Italian food."

In addition to Bada Bing, another Chinese restaurant, Shanghai Gardens, recently opened at 904 Main St., two decades after The Golden Phoenix started serving Chinese food at Main Street and Airport Road.

Other locally owned Heights eateries include Blues Ribs, Guadalajara's, Fuddrucker's, The Winners Circle Sports Bar, Off Main Street Deli, Soup and Such and the long-standing Player's Inn, among the Heights' many casinos and franchise offerings.

Billings designer Mitch Thompson finessed Bada Bing's interior look. Lunches start at $5.99 and dinners at $7.99 to keep the prices reasonable, Orrantia said.

"We're just hoping people can come in and get good food fast and enjoy the atmosphere for a long as they like," he said. "It's very unique."

Contact Jan Falstad at jfalstad@billingsgazette.com or 657-1306.