August is here and summer is in full bloom. Please enjoy some of our upcoming local festivals! We are excited to celebrate with Little Italy Cleveland the Feast of the Assumption.
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Please enjoy a great article originally printed in August 2014 and written by friend Natalie Quagliata Kupinski.

As a family who has been in the food business for almost a century, we have seen a lot of changes. In 1920, my great-grandparents opened a grocery store and it looked very different from today’s pre-packaged stores. There are many items that people are no longer interested in such as the huge block of cheese that sat atop the counter that actually had “worms” crawling through it; desirable and permitted then, not so popular now. Skate fish was an inexpensive stand-by years ago, it too fell out of fashion and now can be found on fine dining menus. Times change, tastes change, and you cater to your clients. 

In 1967 my family jumped further into food and opened a restaurant called The Quagliata’s White House. There were many more restaurants to follow, each geared to a different niche, all Italian, all delicious, and all based in family traditions and recipes. 

We have seen lots of changes in restaurant tastes and preferences over the years and have rode the wave to accommodate our guests to keep them coming back; each restaurant tended by our family and each generation adding a new perspective. We have had the pleasure of serving our guests’ families, watching their children grow up, and their children’s children grow up, and making memories in our restaurants. We have done many milestone anniversary parties for couples whose first dates were in a dark, romantic barrel at The Spaghetti Company, another of our restaurants. We’ve celebrated births, helped to remember those who have passed, and every occasion in between. 

In 1996 we dove deeper and transformed the Holiday Inn in Mayfield Village into the road warrior’s “home away from home.” We have spent more time with some guests than their families have and have made this hotel into one of our top properties in our brand by treating guests like one of our own. Alfredo’s at the Inn resides here and is a true neighborhood favorite. The days of the “two, three, four… martini lunch” at The White House have gone by the wayside; but welcoming a guest by name, a good meal, and a relaxing glass of wine (or two) never go out of style. 

One trend, that is and always will be in fashion, is service. Taking good care of these people, our guests, our extended family, is just as important as what you are serving. The offerings on the menu may be tweaked from year to year, but attention to detail will always remain important. When you are in business for so many years you have the privilege of truly knowing your guests, their tastes and preferences, and using this information to make them happy.

The restaurant business requires a lot of long, odd hours. Being a family business, this is where you spend much time with your actual family. Weekdays, weekends, and holidays, you work when you are needed the most to best take care of your guests. 

When I was younger, we would visit my grandmother on holidays while she was working at The Italian Gardens, another of our family’s restaurants. One of her responsibilities, and what she was famous for, was making desserts. Specifically cassata cake with custard and fresh strawberries and rum cake loaded with white rum, chopped nuts, shaved chocolate, and candied cherries. 

When I was about four years old, my grandmother silently pulled a chair over to her workstation in the kitchen during one of these visits. She gestured for me to stand on the chair, flipped a pie tin over, showed me how to hold the piping bag, and demonstrated her technique to frost the decorative edge on the “cake.” She handed me the bag and implied that I was to edge the tin. I’m sure it took me a ridiculously long time, and I’m positive it was a hot mess, but I finished and I was proud. I showed her my work; she nodded her head, scrapped off the frosting, and instructed me to do it again. I was crushed at the ripe age of four, but I learned cake decorating and many other recipes this way. This was my first formal introduction into our family business.

Grandma is no longer with us and I get to pass on the tradition by making the cakes. [About 10 years ago] I was decorating a cassata cake and my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter was next to me watching. When it was time to edge the cake, she stopped stuffing strawberries in her mouth and was in awe. She loved it  and kept saying it was “cool, cool!” I’m sure that sooner than later I, too, will hand her and her brother the piping bag.

Cassata cakes are popular with the nostalgic crowd; the rum cake is a thing of the past. Nut allergies deter people and, well, parents aren’t interested in wobbly kids after eating a slice of cake. I learned all the tips and tricks to decorate the outside but have used them to make the more current designs that our guests want. I’m sure my kids will learn to stuff and stack the layers and decorate the outside in designs that are popular in their time. And so the cycle will continue.

My brother has learned the traditions as well. He is in charge of the kitchen and updates our offerings. The goal is a combination of well-loved favorites from family recipes and new palate pleasers. He skillfully walks the fine line of too many changes to what our guests are craving and not enough modernization. 

Over the years, tastes have changed and guests are looking for more health conscience options.  A chicken cutlet that is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, topped with bubbly melted provolone and served with piping hot spaghettini, smothered in basil and garlic-laden marinara sauce might not be good for the waistline every day, but it defiantly feeds the soul. 

The longing for sauce that tastes like mom’s never dies. Food has a way of making memories and transporting you back to a place of enjoyment. As much as we want to cater to all the current tastes and trends, we can’t disappoint our guests who have been dining with us for decades and need their veal parmigiana fix. Even though some diners may want their slow-roasted tomato sauce served over gluten-free pasta, it still brings them to a place in time where they associate happy memories with something my great-grandparents started.