Greetings Friends,
 I'm getting back to you regarding a promise I made earlier this summer. I told you that Chef Hutson and I were working on perfecting a homemade cannoli and I would get back to you sometime later this summer. Well summer ends tomorrow and as promised here is my cannoli announcement, once again proving that I am a man of my word (albeit barely). Cannolis have never been on our menu and I have been scolded for this glaring omission since we opened our doors in 1994. I've never been a fan of them as I've had so many average to poor ones over the years, but after years of pressure, and an inspirational trip to Mike's Pastry in Boston we went to work sampling different shell and filling recipes and procedures over the last couple of months. I know... tough work, but someone has to do it!

Its interesting, but I discover again and again that the best recipes are not necessarily complicated but just require using high quality ingredients, careful technique and fresh preparation. I think you will like the results of our labor. So, I would like to invite you to come in anytime in the next three weeks for a complimentary sample of our cannoli. Every few days Chef Hutson will be sampling a new variety; some traditional and some a little off the wall, so it should be fun. These are not on the menu yet and only available to my email friends so as usual you have memorize and quote a code phrase to identify yourself as a privileged cannoli taster.
Your secret phrase is; Mike is cool. No - just kidding. Even I'm sick of that.
The real phrase is; That's the way the Cannoli crumbles. Say that phrase and every person in your party will be treated to a sample sized cannoli. We will be sampling these through October 13th. Again, extra credit and face time on the web site for originality when you work the phrase into a conversation with a server or manager. Have fun and hope you enjoy! Oh - and here's a link to a little video of a tasting we did along the way. Hope to see you soon and please feel free to give me some feedback on your experience. Mike

Perfect Cannoli Video

End of Summer update

Hello Friends,
Just a quick update from my last Email.

First of all, a warm welcome to all the new RigaTony's fans who have signed up over the past several weeks! I will do my best to make these infrequent emails informative and delicious.

In my last email I offered a challenge to you for a chance to be Guest Tasters in our next Wine Dinner Development Meeting. The challenge was to write to me and make your case as to why you are the most qualified person to be a food/wine taster. This is a chance to be locked in a room for several hours with Mike & Chrissy, Chef Hutson and our wine vendor, and critique the many food courses and countless wine varietals that will ultimately comprise our next Wine Dinner. It came down to two finalists, both of whom made compelling cases for different reasons. One begged to be chosen in the name of her Italian grandmother, saying that being chosen would finally give Grandma something to be proud of her for. The other is a long time customer who is attempting to intimidate me with his private collection of 300 wines, regular visits to Napa and 20+ years of culinary pursuits in his home kitchen. In the end I couldn't say no to either one of them so congrats to both Jim and Jennifer who have been awarded the title of Guest Tasters at our next development meeing. Pictures of the event will be forthcoming. (The actual wine dinner is scheduled for Monday September 12th, and soon we'll send out a detailed announcement.)

As you may remember I offered all of you a scoop of our cool delicious Spumoni Ice Cream if you said "Mike is Cool" when you visited us earlier in the summer. The response? Well, some of our servers have developed carpel tunnel symptoms from scooping spumoni all summer. Some of you think I'm so cool that you were compelled to come in several times! I also offered "extra points" for anyone who could work "Mike is Cool" into a memorable conversation. The extra points would include a video of your conversation posted on our web site. Well the operative word is "memorable" and under that criteria Bob Auffert wins hands down. It is admittedly a little off-color but hilariously delivered, so I will risk any negative comments and post away! Congratulations Bob!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xboyf6LJkjQ

Oh and regarding my pledge to develop a delicious cannoli to add to our menu. I am pleased to announce that Chef Hutson has nailed it. He has perfected a delicious shell and developed various exotic fillings and the results are to die for. All that remains is to expand the recipes and our production, but I predict a surprise for all of you in a few days, so keep your eye on your email boxes.

Thanks for a great summer and I'll be in touch soon.

Mike Lopercio

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

rigatonys.com
facebook.com/rigatonys
twitter.com/rigatonys

Happy New Year!!!

Yes I do realize its April 1st and this is not an April fools prank. However, it is a brand New Year for RigaTony's. Believe it or not, one full year has already raced by since we opened our doors on April 1st 2010. I was told at the time that opening on April 1st was not exactly a good omen, but I think those same people also said our new location was cursed because so many restaurants had failed to make a go of it here. As it turned out this location has been incredible, and thanks to all of you, has been way beyond our most optimistic of expectations.
I think that part of the success we've enjoyed has been due to the fact that this is now our one and only restaurant, and Chrissy and I have rediscovered the joy of being restaurateurs. The issues and headaches of managing multiple locations took us away from an intimate connection with the business, and now we say to ourselves, "Oh yeah, this is why we do this!" Not to say that I'll never do more locations. We've been pitched lots of opportunities, but I want to enjoy this for at least another year before we decide to
drive off that bridge again.
It's also really nice to be part of a family restaurant and I mean that literally. Our children Jenny, Ellen and Kevin all work at RigaTony's with us as does Ty does when he comes home from college during the summers.
I've thought about the year and how fast it's gone by, but at the same time we've accomplished a lot since the opening. Chrissy has focused on developing the most spirited and competent service crew in the city, and the best patio garden in the city. She discovered that she inherited her mother's green thumb and nurtures everything from eggplant, peppers and herbs right there on the patio. I have been working on a new menu with Chef Hutson that we'll be introducing in two weeks. During its development we had a brainstorm and decided to change our fresh baked Ciabatta Bread to the Olive Garden's frozen bread sticks and eliminate that ridiculous antipasto salad we've served for 15 years. Hmmm... am I sensing panic, rage or a bit of both? Did you forget the date? April Fools!!! No worries - all of your favorite "sacred cow" items are safe from our meddling. Our revisions consist of introducing eight new items on the dinner menu, and I am really excited to have you try them. I'll start teasing you with details next week.
I have also hired Jody Chandler, a social media advisor, to give our web site a major tune-up and to tutor Jenny and I so we can become Facebook Experts! I admit to initially being a bit reluctant, but I have seen the light as I realize the incredible potential for us to connect with you in a more exciting way. It's going to be great fun and I encourage you to friend us at lskjdflsjfjfljfl; . There is a lot going on with our farmers market, wine dinners, retail and take-out special, cooking demonstrations for our new menu, virtual interviews and tours and so on. We have lots of great ideas in the works so you should check in to see if we can pull it off!
Thanks again for being with us through this incredible year. We're looking forward to sharing more great food, great times, and adventures with you.

Mike Lopercio

Repentant and exhausted but still babbling

Did you ever lose contact with an old friend. You were supposed to call them back and then you forgot and then it became really uncomfortable and still you didn't respond and the longer you take the more difficult it becomes to make a simple phone call? That defines me and this blog. I dropped it when I finally became overwhelmed in the final stages of construction. Keeping a blog seemed like such a fun and easy idea at the time but its amazing how lack of sleep and extreme stress subtley redefines your priorities.
Anyway - we opened our humble little restaurant thanks to months of hard work by Chrissy and me, but just as much credit goes to the EXCELLENCE of our entire staff and the stunning loyalty of the RigaTony's faithful, and in the end the opening was an enormous success. I can't overstate how big the opening was. I don't normally talk about numbers because it feels like I'm devaluing the what we're really all about - serving great food. My philosophy has always been to serve great quality at a great value and the numbers will take care of themselves. But lets break that rule and talk numbers for just this once! Before we opened Chrissy and I did a business plan and endlessly debated what our sales numbers would be. My position was that we would lose about 25% of our business by moving from the Chandler location. Some people might feel it was too far away, others may not discover our move etc… I hoped at the same time that we would make new friends in our new neighborhood that would make up for most of that loss so that in the end I felt we would be doing 90% of our old business. Over the course of a year I felt we could make up the 10% difference and even build on that eventually. Chrissy, my lovely and always optimistic wife thought we would be busy from the get-go and forecast an immediate 10 to 20 % increase over last year's numbers….. The envelope please…….. The actual opening numbers are; Week One- 50% increase from 2009, Week Two - 60% increase, Week three - 70% increase. (I'm not kidding!) After week three we leveled off and now continue to hold at around 60-70% more sales than last year. I have always found that the busier we are, the better job we do. Everyone is energized and focused and after nine weeks of business we are doing an outstanding job - if I do say so myself. I love to brag on my crew because I think they are truly remarkable.

The first two or three weeks of our opening were nerve wracking because the waiting line was so long and it is painful to tell good friends they have to wait for an hour or more for dinner. Since then we've made adjustments, added seats with the opening of the garden terrace, purchased a paging system, increased the kitchen capacity, and in general have become more efficient. As a result our waiting list is rarely more than 30 minutes now.

Ok - enough numbers. I think what I want to do now is to finally finish this blog, or more accurately bring it up to date. During the opening at different times I lost both my camera and my cell phone so I don’t' have all the images I was hoping to post here. (are you beginning to feel how out of control I was?) But I did save some images and some funny moments which I will add to this blog. In the meantime I apologize to those of you who kept checking back for updates on the restaurant just to see this site frozen in time, but most importantly to those of you who helped make our opening the most exciting experience of Chrissy's and my professional carriers. We are now settled into the wonderful and comparatively relaxed routine of serving lunch and dinner to our friends every day, but that last couple of months was an "E ticket" ride we will never forget.

Here's a link to the first part of the final tour of the finished product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRjFv4XVP3o

Mike

Construction Chaos

Here is a brief look at what is going on in your new restaurant. Things are moving very quickly and its fun to watch it evolve before your eyes.

sad goodbye

All of our little problems, our worries, our work and our everyday lives came into much sharper focus Sunday. Our entire crew learned with unspeakable sadness that we lost one of our own. Edgardo Ramirez, a two year Rigatony's staff member died of a heart attack on Saturday night. If you had walked through our kitchen you would have recognized him by seeing one of the hardest working people in the building with the biggest smile. His defining characteristic was that he was a joyful man, always happy, always laughing and a pleasure for everyone to work with. He was only thirty and he leaves behind a seven year old son Jair, a six year old son Jeremy, a two year old daughter Angelie and his wife Areli who is expecting their fourth child. No other words are needed beyond that and indeed none can express the shock and sadness for our crew and certainly for his family.

We are starting a collection for his family and if you wish to contribute we are accepting contributions in his name at the front desk at RigaTony's or by mail at;

First Press Ventures,
PO Box 1701
Gilbert, Arizona 85299