Garganelli with Veal Ragu
We make this hearty meat sauce with either veal (as here) or duck. Which of the two makes for a better ragu is often the subject of intense family debate. Both preparations pair beautifully with garga...
Mangia!
Running a business is not for the faint of heart. Running a restaurant with three generations of family members can impact a restaurateur’s heart in an entirely different way. At these Italian restaurants, the ties that bind can keep a business going. Or change it into something new. We spoke with moms and dads, sons and daughters, learning of their struggles to keep the family business going and finding the joy after the pandemic nearly crushed it. While these restaurants share an Italian culinary foundation, each story is unique, distinctly their own, and delicious.
Piazza D’Angelo, Mill Valley
Luigi Petrone, proprietor of D’Angelo, does not remember spending the first six months of his life in a bassinet placed in the restaurant kitchen at the feet of his mom, Teresa. Along with Luigi’s father, Paolo, Teresa was a chef at D’Angelo, spending days and nights making sure the business ran smoothly and customers left happy. “My mom was the chef here and pregnant with me,“ Petrone says. “She cooked up to the day I was born.“
The young Petrone spent summers at his grandparents’ farm near Napoli, learning to eat and drink whatever they grew. As a young adult in California, he stepped into his dad’s and his Uncle Domenico’s world who were partners in the business, working the dish pit or the host stand or anywhere in-between. “I didn’t necessarily pick it but I knew when I was a kid that this was what I wanted to do,“ Petrone says. In 2016, as Paolo sought to slow down a bit and Domenico turned his attention to his burgeoning career as a hotelier, the brothers passed their shares to Petrone and his cousin, Felicia. Earlier this year, Felicia stepped back from the 43-year-old business, leaving Petrone as the sole operator.
While the restaurant has always focused on fresh ingredients, Petrone has stepped it up a notch, sourcing most produce and fish locally and cooking only with olive oil. Wellness is a core value. And, in the pandemic’s wake, efficiency is a core tenet, a requirement for future success. Petrone will keep the restaurant’s focus on “good food, good service, and good Italian wine,“ he says. “I love the people, I love the socializing. I don’t think I could have done it any other way.“ Whether his daughters, ages 4 and 7, will follow in Dad’s footsteps remains to be seen.
PiazzaDAngelo.com 22 Miller Ave, Mill Valley
Servino, Tiburon
Hailing from Calabria, the long toe of Italy’s high-heeled boot, Angelo Servino opened his namesake restaurant with his wife, Kathryn, on Tiburon’s historic Ark Row in 1977. After 23 years there and 20 more down the street at number 9 Main Street, not to mention a pandemic when Servino meals were prepared from the family’s Caffe Acri restaurant, Servino with his older son, Natale, returned home to the restaurant’s original Ark Row location last year.
The move was an opportunity for father and son to take a deeper dive into the trattoria experience. “It’s a casual dinner service that looks at regionality and seasonality of Italian cuisine,” says Natale, who now runs Servino with his father. (Kathryn, along with Natale’s younger brother, Vittorio, is more responsible for Caffe Acri but there is operational and familial overlap.)
Photo 1: Luigi Petrone at Piazza D’Angelo.
Photo 2: Angelo Servino, Massimo Covello, Natale, Kathryn and Vittorio Servino.
Photo 3: The Della Santinas in the restaurant’s courtyard. Left to right: Pia, Rob, Quirico (Dan), Marco and Nicole. Missing: Matteo.
With cousin Massimo Covello running the kitchen and Natale’s interest in environmental protection and building sustainability into local food systems, a natural bridge emerged, connecting Calabria’s peppers and olive oil with Northern California’s foodshed. “It looped me back in,” Natale says. “Having that embedded knowledge of classic approach that Dad brings to the table with a more outward-looking approach that my generation brings to the table really fits the moment.“
The vibe is quietly elegant. Certain dishes, such as Raviolini al Funghi and Pollo Arrosto, remain on the menu whatever the season, must-haves for the many regulars who flock to the remodeled Ark. But hyper-seasonal cuisine is where the menu’s expressive tension lies. Summer’s Local Halibut Crudo may give way to Carpaccio di Manzo as the weather turns, just as stuffed squash blossoms give way to seared pork chop with apple relish.
The family added an enoteca in the neighboring ark at 116, a showcase for Italian wine and cocktails that allow Angelo and Natale to share the history of Italian wine through thoughtful, environmentally conscious wine growers in Italy.
While Angelo greets guests during dinner and chats with staff, exceptional service rather than the restaurant’s past or future is the hot topic. Neither Natale nor Vittorio currently has children. For Natale, the Servino mind-set is more important for the restaurant’s future. “We always look to the past in terms of respecting traditions and classics and look to the future in terms of growing and improving,” he says. For now, that is more than enough. Servino.com 114 Main St, Tiburon
Della Santina
Unraveling the history of San Francisco’s “Original Joe’s” restaurants and their many spin-offs requires a three-dimensional map of family ties to cousins, second cousins and beyond. “Great-Uncle Adolf and partner Bruno Scateno started everything at Original Joe’s in the Marina,” Rob Della Santina, proprietor of Della Santina’s, tells me. “Then they parted ways and Adolf opened Marin Joe's and Bruno opened Westlake Joe's.” After 20-some years working at both locations, Rob’s father, Quirico Giovanni Salvatore Della Santina, left San Francisco and Corte Madera behind to open his own place in downtown Sonoma in 1990. “He had 11 tables on a corner in Sonoma,” Della Santina says.
Now operating down the block from the original location, the restaurant’s ample courtyard, complete with burbling fountain and flower-bedecked pergola, is transportive. As the aroma of house-made bread wafted over me, I heard Pavarotti singing Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot—was I in Sonoma or the family’s heritage Tuscan town of Lucca?
The menu leans into house-made northern Italian cuisine. Tardelli stuffed with meat and spinach, a Lucchese specialty, and cannelloni in the style of Florence are as popular as the gnocchi. The built-in rotisserie spins local duck, chicken and veal into daily specials. Desserts, like tiramisu and affogato, are also made on the premises.
More recently, Rob and his wife, Nicole, and partner Ron Kantor opened a wine bar next door, Enoteca Della Santina. A natural extension of the restaurant, the wine experience is global, reaching far beyond Sonoma and Italy to Chile, Hungary, Washington and other locales that tempt the team’s palate.
“We do have some cellar wines,” says Nicole, “but we look for wines that are affordable and drinkable now.” That may include Pavarotti’s favored Lambrusco, a quaffable tipple for warm summer afternoons.
DellaSantinas.com 133 E Napa St, Sonoma
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