ITALIAN FOODIES

I decided I should do a post on La Cucina for all the lurkers that aren't from Limerick. We opened La Cucina in 2003, after we identified a big demand in the market for good quality take-away home-made Italian food.  Bruno's parents opened La Piccola Italia over 30 years ago in the city centre, you can imagine the battle they had back then, they could only buy olive oil in the chemist. Bru and his sister Claudia opened La Piccola Pizzeria in 1997 and it took off straight away. Back then there was no such thing as take-away pizza

Claudia and her husband Gareth now run the Pizzeria and me and Bru run La Cucina. When we opened first we had the romantic notion of running an Italian deli selling all sorts of Italian goodies made by hand everday. This is how we started off, bru's mother used to come in a couple of times a week and show us how to make new Italian goodies like rice balls, cannoli, spinach & ricotta tart, courgette tart, carnaroli rice salad, pizza with nutella, pizza with potato & onion etc and where did it all go -  in the bin I'm afraid. We were just ahead of our time, we got quite disillusioned in the first year as anything different that we made we threw out. 

Today our menu has been tailored to suit the Irish market , we do a huge range of pizza, pasta, panini, hot wraps, salads, desserts, coffees all to take-away. Some things on the menu just don't happen in Italy:

• pineapple on pizza - a big no no!
• chicken in pasta - another big no no!
• cream in carbonara
• pesto on sandwiches
• very little creamy pastas, more tomato based.
• pasta salads
• there is no such thing as ceasar salad!

The funny thing is our best pasta seller is Pasta Pollo - chicken in white wine cream sauce with fettucine and our biggest pizza seller is Pizza Limerick with ham and pineapple and Con Tutto with everything! We sell a lot more cream based sauces than tomato based and as I mentioned before pesto on sandwiches has become the new mayo. At the end of the day as long as our customers are happy we are too and no matter what we make we still put the same passion and energy into it!!

A typical day in La Cucina is a very busy affair as anyone who eats there can see. It never stops, we make everything from scratch on the premises 

• pizza dough and sauce
• bolognese, pomodoro sauce, pesto, bechemala, arrabiata
• lasagna, pasta al forno
• salads - coleslaw, potato salad, house salad, pasta salads etc.
• breaded chicken, boiled chicken
• prep for pizza, sandwiches, pastas - all the veg etc has to be chopped by hand. One of the biggest and most time-consuming jobs is actually preparing the lettuce, it just takes so long to wash it, dry it and then chop it all up. We refuse to use pre-packed lettuce!!
• on top of all that we have to make all the food to order, cleaning, orders for the next day, catering and the books!! busy busy!!

We buy all our desserts in now from Sallymills, Laura and Wildes as we just don't have time to do our own. These days we actually get very little time to try anything new as it is so busy  - a good complaint!!

We have big plans for the future and would love to open in the city centre someday, it would be a bit different focusing more on casual dining and maybe a wine bar incorporated!! Bring on the "cafe bar license"! It's been put on hold for the moment with the arrival of the princess but watch this space!!!

We're also in the process of launching "sauces by italian foodies". We've also had a couple of people approach us about franchising and are very interested in opening La Cucina shops in other parts of the country but at the moment we're too busy enjoying the good life "la dolce vita" with the princess!We've adopted the Italian approach to life - good food, good family and good times!!!