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Just like Sunday meals at grandma’s house.
For the owners of Nonna Rosa Traditional Italian Kitchen, a new restaurant in Akron, everything from the menu to the music to the décor was designed to give diners the experience of a family meal made by Nonna Rosa.
Named after the grandmother of sister owners Rosa Conigliaro and Marisa Conigliaro, the restaurant is the latest in a long line of family restaurant businesses. Their Italian immigrant parents opened the first Two Cousins restaurant in the 1970s and have grown the area restaurant brand for the past four decades.
Rosa and Marisa grew up working in the family business, and today they manage three Two Cousins locations in the county. They also spent time each year visiting family in Sicily.
“Every summer we would go visit our family at Nonna Rosa’s summer house, and every Sunday we’d have big gatherings of family and friends. There were musicians, and Nonna would cook her fresh pasta and sauce,” Rosa saysid.
As the sisters and their husbands, Javier Martinez and Rino Gelardi, respectively, looked to take the next step for their businesses, the idea came together for a restaurant honoring Nonna Rosa. Feeling that the time was right and the market was ready for it, they moved forward on a place full of the feel and taste of their family’s Italian kitchen.
“We wanted to give folks a different option for Italian food in the area,” Rosa saysid.
The menu goes far beyond traditional pizza, with nearly everything handmade on site. The staff arrives early each day to hand-make the restaurant’s pasta, following the same recipe Nonna Rosa did. It’s made exactly as she would have made it, Rosa says. Black-and-white photographs adorning the wall near the entrance depicting Nonna Rosa’s hands kneading bread, rolling pasta and smiling with her family.
Bread dough, alfredo and red sauces, and meatballs are all made on site daily. The kitchen team makes the alfredo sauce on the spot when an order is placed, so it’s as fresh as it gets, Rosa says.
Gelardi runs the kitchen and uses his own family’s experience in a butcher shop to wrap the restaurant’s sausage and cut itstheir own steaks using grass-fed meat from local farms. They also hand-make prosciutto, mozzarella fritta, and breaded chicken or veal for the Milanese entrée. And of course, cannolis filled while you wait and freshly made crème brûlée also grace the menu.
“We brought so much of our memories and our experience cooking as a family to this restaurant,” Rosa saysid.
She remembers the seemingly never-ending supply of fresh tomatoes in Sicily, and how she and her sister would help can them, as well as make sun-dried tomatoes and tomato paste. To make the tomato paste, they would pour tomato sauce onto long wooden boards and leave itthem in the sun to evaporate. It was the sisters’ job to keep the sauce moving, flattening and mixing with spoons while it evaporated, slowly condensing the volume until all the tomato paste was contained on one board.
Each of those experiences played into what is Nonna Rosa’s in Akron today. The interior includes brick archways and shelves lined with jars of sauce, spices and pasta. Visitors will find a pasta roller and kitchen scales on display, along with hanging herbs and a collage of antique china plates. And over it all floats soft saxophone and tinkling piano notes.
As family members go in and out of the kitchen, which features a large “Cucina” sign above the door, diners will also hear snatches of rapid-fire Italian while the scents of herbs and tomatoes float out.
“We look forward to coming up with authentic, creative dishes, using the foods we grew up on,” Rosa says.
The most popular dishes include traditional items such as lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, and the chicken and veal Milanese dishes, she saysid. The family also recommends their mushroom alfredo and vitina pizza, a handmade dough with pesto, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, prosciutto and arugula. Diners can find a wide mix of appetizers, soups and salads, sandwiches, pizzas and strombolis, as well as pastas and entrees, all with that homemade touch directly from Nonna Rosa.
A large bar is off to one side with 12 beers on tap, and visitors can also bring their own bottles. A corking fee applies for parties of XX or more.
Nonna Rosa also features a separate space available for larger gatherings, such as a corporate events or family partiesy, with seating for up to 40 people.
“When you come here, you are family,” Rosa says. “We designed Nonna Rosa to be a rustic representation of a homestyle Italian meal, comfort food with quality ingredients made fresh.”
