EVANSTON Ill. Lucia Mazzocchetti receives many compliments for her Italian restaurant in Evanston, Ill. But when her 7-year-old daughter began eating her vegetables at Trattoria DOC, she deemed the business a success.
The restaurant, which opened in April 2006, offers high-quality food at affordable prices. The chefs primarily cook with olive oil and religiously use DeCecco pasta, which is imported from Italy. And they especially pride themselves in their genuine thin-crust pizza.
“Having lived in Italy, we knew what pizza was all about,” Mazzocchetti said of her family’s experience before opening her first restaurant in 1999. “We try to keep it truly authentic. We offer cooking that women have done for hundreds of years.”
Though her first Chicago-based restaurant, Pizza DOC, was very successful, her business partner did not share her long-term vision of making original Italian food with high-quality ingredients. Importing the ingredients from Italy was particularly costly, especially with an unfavorable euro-to-dollar exchange rate, but Mazzocchetti was not willing to settle for less costly ingedients. So she sold the concept to her business partner and started work on a new place in Evanston, Ill.
“A restaurant is like a relationship,” she said. “Sometimes you need to change and do something different.” But she soon found out that all new beginnings are difficult.
When her first restaurant, Pizza DOC, opened with a modest startup cost of $300,000, many of its 100 seats remained empty during the first years. Though Mazzocchetti ordered a wood-burning oven from Italy and offered great quality, many customers failed to understand the concept.
“People were shocked,” Mazzocchetti recalled. “They would come in asking for pepperoni pizza, which is not Italian.”
The restaurant’s debut came in the fall of 2003, when the Chicago TV show “Check Please” featured Pizza DOC as one of the top restaurants. The next evening there was a 45-minute line in front of the door and customers were irate because of the waiting time. After its unexpected success, storewide sales averaged about $1 million annually.
In 2006 Mazzocchetti opened Trattoria DOC, with a considerably higher startup cost of $900,000. The investments came mostly from private funds, since banks were only interested in real estate and refused to invest in capital purchases, such as lighting, fixtures and equipment. Leasing companies, however, did help with computer equipment.
Trattoria DOC, which seats about 130 customers, has a big open dining room with large windows overlooking the street. On a Saturday evening, the dining area is bustling with activity as seats fill up and customers enjoy their Italian food with wine. As the pizzas emerge from the wood-burning brick oven at the far end of the room, waiters carry the steaming plates to the hungry guests.
But the vision for the newer restaurant is slightly different from the older version. “We are no longer specifically a pizza place,” Mazzocchetti said.
The restaurant can now focus on other typical Italian dishes, such as homemade gnocchi, or potato dumplings; risotto with clams and mussels; and spaghetti alla carbonara, or spaghetti prepared with bacon, eggs and Parmesan cheese. The average price is $15. The restaurant also offers 25 kinds of big-sized pizzas that range in price from $12 to $15.25 for the most expensive kind. The vegetarian pizzas include the “Ortolana,” with mozzarella, mushrooms, zucchini, artichokes, eggplant and cooked arugula for $13.50, or the “Vegetariana,” with tomato sauce, mozzarella, eggplant, peppers and zucchini for the same price. The meat or fish pizzas are slightly more expensive and include the “Pizza Mare” with Tomato sauce, mozzarella, baby octopus, shrimp, squid, mussels, and clams for $15.25 or the “Pizza Silvio e Gabriele” with tomato sauce, mozzarella, arugula, prosciutto di Parma, sliced tomatoes and shaved parmigiano for the same price. Meat servings and second-course dishes average about $25 each.
“I like opening things, I like the work in progress,” Mazzocchetti said. “I love the fun atmosphere, the excitement, the chaos and also the compliments and admiration.”
And even in this dire economy, customers always seem to come back for more, she said. “We’ve been fairly fortunate – the neighborhood has supported us,” Mazzocchetti said. Though customers have less money to spend, she added, “People are just so happy to be out and relax.”
Claudia Neri, 29, and Stavros Tzavidas, 34, are loyal customers. Neri, who is an Italian student at Northwestern University in Evanston, says she almost feels like she is back at home. “The pizza is as good as in Italy,” she said. Tzavidas, who is an engineer from Athens, said he comes to dine at Trattoria DOC at least once a week.
Though Trattoria DOC opened less than three years ago, annual sales already amount to $1 million.
Mazzocchetti, who shares the business with her sister, Giuliana Mazzocchetti, said their entrepreneurial skills derive from their upbringing and family background.
Mazzocchetti’s father started a wine business in the 1970s. He moved with his American wife to oversee his vineyards in the remote countryside of Abruzzo in central Italy. The family lived in a small and secluded town with no indoor plumbing. Mazzocchetti’s mother used to drive into the village to collect the water for the day in giant barrels. After they slaughtered their pig, her mother used to save the fat from the animal to make their soap. However, in such a small rural community, dominated by patriarchal rules, where children and teachers spoke dialect in school, Mazzocchetti’s family always felt different.
When Mazzocchetti was 12 years old her family decided to move to the U.S. to expand on the wine business. But she has never forgotten her roots and the recipes she grew up with.
“This is a very female-based restaurant,” she said. “The idea is that in Italy you have a huge cooking culture, which sprung from trying to get husbands and children to eat [leftovers].”
For example women who made a traditional dish from southern Italy called “suppli,” would roll leftover risotto rice into breadcrumbs and cook the suppli balls in sizzling oil.
“Women are smart,” she said. “In the whole world there are people who would not eat leftovers. That’s how you become creative.”
But Trattoria DOC’s menu offers more than glorified leftovers. During the February/March period of the Italian carnival, the restaurant serves typical dishes such as a form of deep-fried batter with powdered sugar called “frappe.” Though the dessert was not officially on the menu, Mazzocchetti and the chefs are always trying out new recipes and to earn their guests’ approval.
On Saturday nights the restaurant is bustling with activity. Guests can bite into a large thin-crust pizza or a generous helping of hand-made gnocchi for an average check of $25. The desserts are also made from scratch. For $7, Italians and Americans alike can enjoy a panna cotta or a tiramisu — and even in a grim economy, they can still experience a taste of Italy.