recipes
Story by Barbara Arciero • Photos by Lori Eanes
Fabrizio Cercatore owned restaurants in his native Italy for 17 years before moving to California.
Culinary entrepreneur Fabrizio Cercatore knows how to build a business. Literally. When the COVID-19 lockdown disrupted his plans to open a restaurant in Berkeley in 2020, the Italian-trained maestro pizzaiolo, or master pizza chef, took on some of the construction himself. Italian-born chef builds culinary brand in California serves an array of authentic Italian food. That includes Cercatore’s signature pizza, pasta and gelato, which he makes in the same building as the 35-seat restaurant. Several of his products, including a pizza crust mix and frozen pizza dough, are sold online or in local markets under the Passione Brands label. Other products, such as
“I did everything inside the restaurant, from the tile to running the electrical—and then the electrician came and did the connection—to drywall, even the sewer line I dug,” he recalls with a laugh. “It was a fun experience.” Looking back, he notes the similarity between building a restaurant and making pizza—the latter of which is a passion he’s had since childhood. “One thing really similar is the recipe,” Cercatore says. “You need to use the recipe to do the perfect concrete to mix. There was a lot of mixing to do concrete or stucco or drywall … like mixing flour and water for pizza.” The end result of Cercatore’s construction efforts, Passione Emporio on 5th, opened fully in 2021 and today
his gelato, are marketed to food-service operators. Cercatore continues to add to his Passione Brands offerings, more recently by importing Bronte pistachios from his native Italy. He also hosts culinary bay cruises and just reopened a takeout version of Hot Italian in Sacramento, a pizza restaurant he’d originally opened in 2009. It all started with his passion for pizza, he explains. After all, “passione” means passion in Italian.
Barbara Arciero barciero@californiabountiful.com
32
Spring 2024
Powered by FlippingBook