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RNZ News
15-07-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
A slice of Italy in Dunedin's St Clair
Katrina Toovey has helped to bring about 40 or so Italians to Dunedin through her St Clair businesses The Esplanade, Piccolo Bar and Sorella Gelato. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton Katrina Toovey has helped to bring about 40 or so Italians to Dunedin through her St Clair businesses The Esplanade, Piccolo Bar and Sorella Gelato. A Dunedin seaside suburb is becoming a haven for Italian expats and foodies alike. It all started with a desire to bring authentic woodfired pizzas to the shores of St Clair more than a decade ago. When Katrina Toovey took over The Esplanade back in 2012, she wanted to embrace the history but thought it was time for a new identity. The Esplanade in the Dunedin suburb of St Clair. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton Less a Kiwi pizza restaurant and more an authentic slice of Italy. But she had no idea the business would help to create a thriving, Italian community. "Almost has been a happy accident and kind of an organic growth so when I did take over, I decided that I wanted to do woodfired pizza and I thought who better to do that than an Italian," she said. The woodfire pizza oven at The Esplanade. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton Since then, she has helped to bring about 40 or so Italians to Dunedin, saying there was also a stream of people who floated through on working holiday visas as well as a strong foundation of people in the community. This year, she opened two more businesses - Piccolo Bar and Sorella Gelato - both a short stroll away from The Esplanade and St Clair beach. "Sometimes I do look at it and I think 'how did this happen?' There's a whole community of people here including now children who've bubbled up through this business and through finding something that they like in the city and work they enjoy and a supportive environment," Toovey said. The Esplanade restaurant manager Luca Capece moved to Dunedin for an adventure with his best friend, but now lives here with his partner and two kids. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton Restaurant manager Luca Capece moved over when his best friend, who's a pizza chef, got a job at The Esplanade in 2013. It changed his life. He met his partner there and they now have two kids. "I'm feeling at home here and ... we have a small community, Italian, but what I really enjoy and I was shocked how the Kiwi community treat us. They see us like a family," he said. Capece said it had been a joy being able to speak Italian with other staff and get a taste of home - with a recent staff dinner featuring a traditional polenta dish from his hometown. "When you eat polenta, it brings up all the memories from when your mum was cooking it and you were enjoying it. I come from a big family, we are 10 of us so I remember this big table and then we have some cheese, we have some polenta. It's beautiful," he said. The Esplanade maître d' Vanessa Sanna says there's now about 30 people in their Italian community. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton When Esplanade maître d' Vanessa Sanna moved to Dunedin with her Kiwi husband, she knew no one. She started scouting for good Italian food and came across the restaurant. "That was amazing the day that I step in for the first time, where I heard Italians talking to each other so I said 'oh my gosh, this is my place' ... I really missed the little Italian community and being so far away from home," she said. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton She applied for a job there and has been working there for nearly 10 years . She loved how they shared food after closing, saying it helped to make Italy feel a little closer. There were now about 30 people in their Italian community and they met up to eat and catch up, Sanna said. "This Italian community is growing, many people come see us because they really enjoy this little Italian corner," she said. "It feels like we are in a little Italian coast and you can have your Italian drinks, your Italian food and your Italian gelato, like that's just the cherry on the cake." Gelato maker Marco Adinolfi says he tries to combine his knowledge and love for Italian gelato with some New Zealand flavours. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton Gelato maker Marco Adinolfi moved to Dunedin to bring his creations to Sorella Gelato. He wanted to leave Italy for a different lifestyle and was surprised to find an Italian community here. He hoped his wife and two daughters would join him in a few months time, and said there were plans for a feast to welcome them to the southern city. "Every Italian conversation with friends and family, it's about food. All the time my mum or my dad call me 'what did you eat?' It's the first thing so Italian connection with food is very important," he said. The Esplanade at St Clair in Dunedin. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton He has been trying to combine his knowledge and love for Italian gelato with some New Zealand flavours including a popular scoop inspired by pumpkin pie. "Every flavour I make it's very seasonal. I don't like to use flavouring, chemical flavouring so everything is made by me," he said. He loves clams and discovered he could find wild clams on local beaches. "I go almost every week with my shovel to dig clams," he said. He usually cooked spaghetti with clams for his lunch or dinner most weeks. Katrina Toovey was grateful for the Italians who had uprooted their lives to move to Dunedin and shared their cuisine and culture with the city. "The flavours, the smells, it's all like home and it's all familiar so ... it's like an anchor in a new community and they gravitate towards it," she said. "It makes perfect sense to me, it's kind of what I might do myself when I travel - want the new experiences and then just want the familiar." 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Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Yahoo
Delaware's 5 best summertime craft breweries to drink under the sun
Every winter, craft beer lovers either coop up with their favorite cans at home or push through the weather to gather in taprooms for drafts of the good stuff. But now with the warmth of the sun mostly reliable, it's time to bend those pasty elbows outdoors. For beer lovers, drink sessions at picnic tables in between games of cornhole is the best time of the year. And here in Delaware, we have a few stand-out spots for drinking under the sun. Here are some of them. Revelation Brewing is perhaps undersung, as home to some of the tastiest beer in Delaware. But to beachy locals, hardly a secret. Its original Rehoboth Beach taproom is humble and out of the way, a backroad bar with a chalkboard beer list that feels made for the neighborhood. A little shack out front serves wood-fired pizza, and its beertenders justly have been voted some of the friendliest in the state. But its beers, likewise justly, have won national awards year after year. Mostly, this stems from Revelation's deftness with sour beers conditioned on unholy amounts of fresh raspberry or apricot or blackberry: beers that are balanced, light and beauteously expressive of fruit. But don't sleep on a clean and crisp Pilsner, nor a brown ale accented with on woody notes from Caribbean Mama Juana wood. Just off the Junction Breakwater Trail, its patio is a prime spot for bicyclists to mingle with other beer-drinkers under the open sky near the beach. Where to cycle: Looking for places to bicycle in Delaware? Here are 12 treks to check out Revelation also has expanded to a Georgetown brewery and taproom far from the beach, but conveniently located at a cross-section of highways for those coming in from parts south or west. 19841 Central St., near Rehoboth Beach. Visit Delaware's oldest, biggest and most famous craft brewery is still worth a check-in even for locals. For out-of-towners, it's a rite of passage. Its Milton headquarters features a large outdoor area anchored by the 40-foot tall Steampunk Treehouse, also offering a full bocce court. Every once in a while, they also put pickleball courts in their parking lot for pickleball tournaments. Live music, picnic table seating and the buzz of beer tourists from around the country make the Milton brewery a great way to burn a weekend afternoon. And that's even before you get to their exclusive tap room tastings, offering hard-to-find pours. If you have time, a brewery tour is worth it. Choose from the $5, 25-minute "Quick Sip Tour" and the deeper dive $25, 75-minute "Off-Centered Tour," but note that you must be wearing closed-toe shoes to go into Delaware's Wonka world of beer. 6 Village Center Blvd., Milton. Visit Crooked Hammock is a brewpub with the approximate personality of a Jimmy Buffett concert: a fun-themed Southern-beachy backyard of a place with rainbowed Adirondacks and ping-pong and an actual hammock we're not sure is crooked. And that goes for both their original Lewes and Middletown locations. The beers you should order also are the ones themed for "fun." This could be a pineapple-fruity Jungle Juice sour that tastes more sweet than sour. Or it could be a 'Joint Collaboration IPA,' infused with cannabis aromatics, which smells like a lit bong but tastes mostly mild. Especially, it should be the Hammock Light. The Hammock Light, a crystal-clear beach lager if there ever was one, is the most basic and frictionless beer you can expect to find in this world: It is low calorie, low hop, low gluten, low alcohol and low effort. It's what you'd drink in a parking lot or while thinking about mowing a lawn, the flavor of a life lived without care. A life led, we presume, mostly on a hammock. But the fun spills out into each brewery's "Backyard." At Middletown alone, they have two bocce courts, two horseshoe pits and seven cornhole sets to keep the good times rollin' at the family-friendly spot. 36707 Crooked Hammock Way, Lewes, and 316 Auto Park Drive, Middletown. Visit Thompson Island is the original beer outpost of Rehoboth Beach's omnipresent SoDel Concepts, the restaurant group behind well over a dozen restaurants and bars and breweries along the Delaware coastline. Thompson's better-than-usual taproom food menu shows evidence of this, from stacked smashburgers to seafood to locally famous wings. So does the minimalist white-on-white cottagecore of the restaurant's interior, whose self-consciously rough-hewn furniture looks a little like its painters left early for the day. Al fresco options: Dine outdoors at these restaurants in and around Delaware But if you're here, you're almost certainly here for the indoor-outdoor back bar, the spacious firepit patio with multiple cornhole courts, and an array of beers from a spot-on Baltic porter to No Bad Days lager that starts dry and ends with a strong noble-hop finish. Hopheads should always spend a glass with a truly excellent piney-citrusy, malt-balanced Thompson Island IPA. Some far-flung beer flavor experiments, like a maple pancake sour, might reward caution. But,a mixed-culture Brett saison, a style known for barnyard funk, scored national medals in 2024 at both of the biggest craft beer competitions in American beer. 30133 Veterans Way, near Rehoboth Beach. Visit Sure, the former site of the Harper-Thiel Electroplating Co. has a tasting room in what resembles The Alamo. But when the weather is nice, the best seats in the house move outside. The front patio is filled with tables for hoisting pints of Hazy Tang tangerine cuvée IPA or a glass of Nom de Pomme dry cider. In the back, the patio is a little more bustling with live music, food trucks and usually a kid or two running around and joining in the fun. Even though they have a solid line-up of food trucks, it's hard not to contemplate grabbing a pizza from stand-out La Pizzeria Metro in the same complex, which you can carry over to the brewery. 3129 Miller Road, Wilmington. Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@ or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier). This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Try these Delaware breweries for summer outdoor craft beer sessions
CBS News
23-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Sicilian Oven dishes up authentic wood-fired pizza, creates community gathering spots
A local pizza institution that began as a single restaurant has now grown into a beloved South Florida chain with 20 locations throughout the region. Sicilian Oven isn't just serving up wood-fired pizza, it's creating community gathering spots where regulars are treated like family. "Oh, we love it. I bring my mom here all the time. She's in a home and we bring her here and she loves the pizza and she loves the place and they're so nice to us," Vicky Helms, a regular customer, said. Former Cooper City Mayor Greg Ross shared the same sentiment. "It's, I mean, you can't get better food and you can't get better service and people. It's like going to Cheers. Everybody knows you," he said. Co-owners Andrew Garavuso and Ralph Di Salvo bring authentic Italian heritage to their restaurants. "We've been in the business all our lives," Garavuso explained . "I started when I was 9-years-old in Brooklyn making pizza, and his family started pizzerias back in 1985. Then we joined together, about 16 years ago, and we started this concept: wood-fired pizza, Italian specialties, and it's been good so far." That might be the understatement of the year. At their Cooper City location, the kitchen is bustling well before noon. Garavuso is particularly proud of their wood-fired approach. "You hear that crunch? The crunch comes from the wood-fired oven, baby. A lot of people use gas and cheat. The wood is good," he said. Sicilian Oven prices food, prices keep customers coming back While pizza remains their signature offering, Sicilian Oven's menu extends far beyond, with fresh-to-order pastas, salads, sandwiches, and cocktails, all at accessible prices with regular promotions. "On Tuesday we have 2-for-Tuesday on beers, buy one, get one free. On Wednesday, which is the best, it's 50% off any bottle of wine all day long. Cheers. And on Thirsty Thursdays we have all our specialty cocktails for $10 each," Garavuso explained. These value-oriented items keep customers coming back multiple times per week. "We want you to come here, feel free to enjoy it two or three times a week, and you'll see a lot of people that do that. Sometimes people will tell me, 'You know what, I haven't washed a dish in my house in a couple of weeks,' but that's okay, they're coming in here," Garavuso said. The restaurant's atmosphere aims to transport diners to Italy. "We want you to get maybe a little feel that you're back in Italy even though you're not in Sicily," Garavuso said. The cozy colors and playful "FUGGEDABOUDIT!" signage (which also inspired a sandwich name) completes the experience. Menu Highlights Sicilian salad with homemade roasted peppers, chickpeas, olives, red onions, celery, and shaved parmesan Penne alla vodka Fresh tomato basil pizza Wood-fired specialty pizzas Italian sandwiches including the "Fuggedaboudit" Sicilian Oven is open daily for lunch and dinner from Monday through Friday, with happy hour running from 11:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. daily. Drink specials range from $6 to $10.
