Foodie Friday: Taste of Italy brought right to your own kitchen
CHICAGO (CBS)-- Oak Park's new one-stop-shop for ready-to-bake homemade pasta is perfect for those days when you're trying to avoid the kitchen.
Chef Ciro Parlato is bringing the taste of Italy right to your kitchen.
"They love the place, the colors, the blue. They the sense that they feel that this is that this is a true environment of love, of love for food," Parlato said.
Ciro Parlato spends most of his time in his self-titled shop weighing and measuring out ingredients.
"A lot of restaurants they don't know the owner is not even there. But I'm here. I'm here every day from 7:28 in the morning until 8 p.m., I'm here," Parlato said.
He's replicating flavors from his childhood in southern Italy, from scratch, but now he's doing it in Oak Park.
Developing his menu, one dish at a time
"So the general idea of the concept opens with one item on the menu," Parlato said. "The item was Pasta Alla Nonna."
It was just this one pasta on the menu for the first two months.
"And within 60 days of business, I sold over 1500 of those," He said.
So, Parlato decided it was time to expand the menu. He now has four items on the menu, each served in a one and a half pound container.
"I write the baking instructions for you within 20 minutes, 25 minutes," He said.
But he's got a half dozen or so seats at his homemade counter. Diners get an up-close look at how he handmakes his pastas and meatballs and sauces, churning out hundreds of portions a week, all by himself.
He learned to do it with the help of other restauranteurs.
"I start talking with the community and literally going business to business, whoever has a restaurant right now, and say it, 'how did you open your business? Where did you start?' all those questions and people helped," Parlato said.
Now, three months in, he's working on expanding to soups, focaccia, and maybe even gelato in the summer— but his menu only grows at the rate which he develops his own recipes.
Everything is made from scratch.