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by Kerry-Lynne Demarinis   Opening the door into DeNicola's Italian Restaurant is like opening the door into your grandmother's kitchen.   You are welcomed with a smile, invited to sit down, surrounded by loud conversation and laughter, and there are all those wonderful Italian aromas – baking eggplant in sauce and cheese, simmering p...

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The latest in a line of wood-fired pizza places coming to Northeast Portland has opened its doors. After months of hands-on demolition, construction and build-out, owner Clark Hale opened Pizzeria Otto last Friday, bringing Neapolitan-style pies to the Roseway neighborhood.   Pizzaiolo Justin Clarke, a Brit who lived and trained in Italy bef...

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The tradition of honoring an individual from Portland's diverse immigrant community began in 2011, with the unveiling of the Portland Immigrant Statue in Parkrose. On November 21st, folks huddled under canopies, trying to avoid wind-blown rain, at the Portland Immigrant Statue site in outer East Portland – on a traffic island along NE Sandy Boulev...

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by Samantha Bakall   After nearly a year of anticipation, Renata, a wood-fired Italian restaurant, will open in industrial Southeast Portland on June 1.   Owners Nick and Sandra Arnerich bring a sterling resume to the massive project -- the 10,000-square-foot building, 1921 Weatherly Creamery Building, that houses not only the restaur...

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Soprano Jennifer Forni, who sings the role of Micaela in Portland Opera's upcoming "Carmen," has a bundle of credits that show the makings of a star ascending. During a 2012-2014 stint with the San Jose Opera, she received glowing reviews for her performance of Cio-Cio-San in "Madama Butterfly."   In 2013 she joined the Metropolitan Opera, d...

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When they announced their decision to move their family lock, stock and pasta machine from Florence, Italy, to Portland, Oregon, to open a food cart, American friends of Florence native Paolo Calamai and his Michigan-born wife, Elizabeth Petrosian, were aghast.   "But you're living in Florence!" the friends wailed, thinking their life in Ita...

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Growing up in Yonkers, New York, and later Greenwich, Connecticut, Rick Gencarelli enjoyed large homemade meals with his Italian family every Sunday. Back then, Gencarelli's mother, a first-generation American who learned the culinary trade from her Naples, Italy–born mother, prepared classic Italian dishes like Sunday Pork Ragu and Spaghetti Aglio...

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By Ben Waterhouse   Just when it seemed the gelato craze of the early 2000s had finally petered out, the dense, silky Italian ice cream is back, all thanks to a lanky Italian with a Frank Zappa mustache. Sandro Paolini, a native of Pisa, opened Pinolo Gelato on Southeast Division Street, a neighborhood already awash in ice cream, in June....

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by Ken Kane   Six Italian-Americans sit around the table, a barbecue just completed. Now it's time to chat and drink a little. Seated are an engineer, a Shakespearean scholar, an inventor, an online historian, an expert on reading and memory, a cruise ship crooner- and his five friends.   Jimmie Moglia talks, in his usual lilting, sel...

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by Kerry-Lynne Demarinis At the corner of NW 14th and Quimby stands Friendly House, the home of "La Scuola Italiana di Portland's preschool".   Parents and preschoolers open the door and are instantly inside an Italian classroom; Italian children's music is playing softly in the background, papers with finger-paint handprints hang on the wa...

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