Summer arrives with a blast.

Hello Friends,

Happy Summer! It always amazes me that the thermometer has such an uncanny ability to read a calendar. May was in the comfortable 90's, early June teased us with some low 100's and then WHAM ..... I open my front door on June 21st to a familiar blast furnace and say, "Oh yeah, Summer... I remember you".

We promise to keep you cool here at RigaTony's all summer long. Bookmark this link and it will bring you to the specials page of our website; There you'll find our most current lunch and dinner specials, a description of our very popular Pick A Pasta early bird dinners, and this months Family Take-Out Dinner Specials. We package most of our menu items for take-out, and put together nice family dinners often combining pastas with a pizza, all of which include our antipasto salad and dessert. Its easy to order ahead by phone while browsing the menu on our website. Give us 25 minutes and we'll have it packaged up and ready for you to swing in on your way home.

Our own summer To-Do list;

• Chef Hutson is working on the perfect cannoli. I have resisted putting cannolis on the menu for 15 years but the pressure from you is relentless! I will update you with our pursuit of the perfect cannoli with pictures and video as the summer progresses.

• Chrissy is in patio survival mode tending and bracing her patio garden for 10 weeks of scorching heat. She has a huge variety of plants including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and to be honest lots of things I don't recognize, and she is determined to coax them into surviving the summer.

• Dan is planning out the next couple of wine dinners working with Chef Hutson on seasonal menus and pairing them with wines. Gee... poor Dan has so much tasting and sipping ahead of him. He could use a helper so if you are interested write me a brief email telling me why you're uniquely qualified to be Dan's wine dinner planning assistant.If selected you'll be invited to participate in a food tasting & wine pairing meeting. Send your "wine application" here.

• Jenny's project is to build staff. Most of our serving staff has been with us for years, but we try to fill any vacancies during the summer when we have more time to coach and train so we're razor sharp by the holidays. Jenny is also the self anointed Italian Princess on our Facebook page. "Like" us to experience a different kind of RigaTony's connection.

• Me? I have just the usual business stuff to do except that I am planning a trip to Alaska for Chrissy and myself in August. Some of you may know Vicky who works with us all winter long, and then migrates to Alaska during the summer to manage a restaurant in a resort at Denali National Park. Now that will be cool!

Speaking of cool, that's what I promised you, so keep reading and I'll deliver. We prepare some incredible desserts from scratch, but because of this our excellent spumoni ice cream is often overlooked. Even when I don't "plan ahead" and save room for tackling a slice of Cappuccino Pie, I can always find room for a refreshing dip of spumoni. So, as your reward to reading this entire missive I am offering each member of your dinner party a complimentary scoop of spumoni ice cream when you dine in with us from now through the entire month of July. This will be for dine-in only after 4 pm, and its only for my special Email Friends. Here's the catch; To get the scoop on this you have to say the phrase "Mike is Cool" to your server soon after you're seated. You get extra points if you work the phrase into a conversation with your server. If you give us a really memorable response you'll be featured on our web site.

Have a wonderful summer and thanks for allowing us to serve you.

Mike Lopercio

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