Hollywood on the Potomac: Cafe Milano Turns 25
by Janet Donovan Cafe Milano keeper of the gate Laurent Menoud tells us that catering a birthday lunch for Pope Benedict XVI was "one of the greatest days of my life."The 81st birthday celebration for His Holiness fell on April 16, 2008 at the Embassy of the Holy See during the Pontiff's visit to the Nation's capital. "I've met ma...
St. Anthony’s Harvest Festival Sept. 19-20
By Vince Rembulat St. Anthony's Harvest Festival is right around the corner. To mark the occasion, organizers will be selling the souvenir shirts and aprons after each of the masses this weekend or at the parish hall, 505 E. North St. Manteca. Lois and Keith Wiedenhoeft are this year's co-chairs. The shirts and apron with the...
Pellicola opens: N.Y.-meets-Naples pizza in downtown L.A.
Now that downtown L.A. (not all of L.A., just downtown) has been dubbed "America's Next Great City," it deserves more great pizza. Enter Pellicola Pizzeria at 8th and Hill streets, serving crisp, thin-crusted pies marrying New York and Neapolitan styles. The sleek, mezzanined glass box of a restaurant, where you can get pies whole or by th...
No to Starbucks, yes to Calabria
By Ian Anderson Later this summer, longtime North Park coffee roaster Caffé Calabria will launch its first offsite expansion in 15 years, opening a satellite coffee bar in a ground-floor storefront at the 1 Columbia Place high-rise in downtown's Columbia neighborhood. A second expansion will be quick to follow, this one south of t...
Pizza Tossing Competition with Filippi’s
The Little Italy Association is honored to have Danny Moceri, of Filippi's Pizza Grotto, and the last Honorary Little Italy Mayor, Luke Vinci, present the Famous Fantastic Fabulous Flip-Off with Filippi's...for FUN! Pizza Tossing Competition. Sunday, october 9th. Space is limited, so be sure to get you Pizza Tossing Entry Form in now! Click he...
The World Champion Pizzaiolo is from the San Francisco Bay Area
Who is this world-renowned pizzaiolo? None other than Tony Gemignani. What exactly is a pizzaiolo? That would be a person who makes pizzas in an official pizzeria. Recently, L'Italo-Americano interviewed Bay Area native, Tony Gemignani and he shared the story of his impressive career, a career that began quietly in a typical California tow...
Laura Meyer: The Pizzaiola Changing the Face of Pizza
Laura Meyer landed her first job 10 years ago, at 17, the way most teenagers do — by wanting to work where her friends did. It was a serendipitous start to what has turned out to be a wildly successful career choice: Meyer has since won both the World Pizza Championship in pan pizza in 2013 in Parma, Italy and the 2014 International Pizza Expo in L...
Master Butcher Dario Cecchini Closes the First Week of Italian Cuisine in the Bay Area
by Serena Perfetto San Francisco and the Bay Area welcomed a special guest for the First Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, that took place in over 100 countries in late November. Pinseria Montesacro, the San Franciscan restaurant making Roman-style pizza, hosted The Art of Butchery - A Porchetta Lunch with Dario Cecchini, the well-know...
Italy Rocks the Fancy Food Show
Delectable delights from Italy abounded at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, which concluded today after a long and scrumptious weekend. The show is a big deal in food circles, occurring annually in San Francisco and New York. Forty thousand attendees bring over 260,000 different kinds of food from over 80 countries. Today at the Moscone Center...
Mario Batali's Chi Spacca celebrated in short film
Via Nowness.com, I came across a beautiful little (three-minute-plus) film about Chi Spacca, ("cleaver") the new Mario Batali et al restaurant next door to Osteria Mozza on Melrose Avenue. If you haven't been, go. This is a restaurant where Chad Colby, who's responsible for all those fabulous family-style pig dinners at Scuola di Pizza, sh...
Chianti's offers authentic Italian food
By Paula King Shayan Rahimi grew up savoring his father's authentic recipes from their rustic, Northern Italian roots and recently realized that there was a need for this type of cuisine in Brentwood. Rahimi's father, Al Mancini, owned the popular Chianti's Ristorante in Pleasanton for four years before selling it this year. ...
Ca’ Momi – Italian sensibility in northern California
by Lisa Carley Sometimes you meet people who seem to have a great story. I had dinner a couple of weeks ago at L'Artusi with Valentina Migotto and Dario De Conti from Ca' Momi in Napa Valley, thoroughly enjoyed their story, the food and their wine. Dinner was a fun and festive evening pairing their wines with L'Artusi's creative I...