‘WE CATER FOR EVERYBODY AND ANYBODY’
Family reveals secret to success of Italian restaurant
T
UCKED away on a nondescript side street in central Cardiff, you could be forgiven for walking past a tiny, pale-green shop front.
But you cannot fail to notice the mouthwatering aroma of roasting garlic and fresh-baked dough wafting through the street.
If you care to stop and look closer you will see a steady stream of contented people emerging from a single wooden door with “Cafe Citta” written above in looping gold letters.
Some call it the best Italian restaurant in town; others say the whole of Wales. But one thing is for sure – Cafe Citta began cooking rustic homemade pizzas in a proper wood-fired oven before that kind of thing became cool.
To step inside the cosy interior is to walk into a tiny slice of Italian life In fact it’s not just an Italian restaurant you are walking into, but the welcoming arms of an entire Italian family, headed by Adriano D’Arezzo, 62, and his wife Diana, 63.
So what is the secret behind the tiny restaurant with just 13 tables, sandwiched between a tattoo parlour and what used to be a strip club, with decor that hasn’t changed for more than a decade and a website that would generously be described as basic?
According to Diana the attraction lies in the simplicity of their food and the size of their restaurant – and it starts with their name. “It’s said like ‘cheeta’ and means ‘in town’,” she explained. “I didn’t want anything cheesy so settled on something generic.
“It’s not a la carte, it’s just good rustic home cooking. We don’t pretend to be something we aren’t – we’re just casual. People come in and say what a lovely atmosphere we have in the restaurant but that’s the customers making that. Some say it’s like walking into your nonna’s kitchen.
“It’s tiny and it’s quite a squeeze, which isn’t for everyone. But we want to keep it small and cosy.”
So much so that part of the attraction of dining there is watching the staff play an intricate game of table Tetris. It is a seemingly smooth and well-practised dance as they somehow seat customers, take orders, and convey generous plates of food between the tightly-packed tables.
The eagle-eyed diner might wonder where staff disappear to when they descend a tiny set of stairs squeezed into the corner of the kitchen. Few realise that, deep below the restaurant, lies a network of tunnels built hundreds of years ago when the canals used to run through Cardiff.
Long before Cafe Citta, the restaurant was a butcher’s shop and the old meat fridges are still sunk into stone arches below, which today act as stores for the restaurant above.
The cavern extends under Church Street itself. That is where the dough mixer lives along with the other tools of the trade including the meat slicers, the ice cream maker, the fridges, and even the ‘human dishwasher’.
Right from the off Diana and Adriano knew what they were creating when they opened in November 2009. Recalling those early days, Diana said: “I remember when we first opened people would ask us ‘Who are you catering for?’ and I said: ‘Well, no one type of person really’. Today we cater for everybody and anybody and that’s my greatest satisfaction.”
But at the end of 2009 the UK was in the depths of the recession. It probably wasn’t the best time to think about opening a new restaurant on a tucked-away street with minimal passing trade, I offer.
Diana replied: “We went in with our eyes open; we were prepared for the long slog.” It meant 15-hour days and seven-day weeks. There was no day off.
Just as they got things up and running along came a winter that froze much of Wales. Still they ploughed on.
Diana explained: “At that point it was just me, my husband, my son Danilo, and one of my daughters, Nevis. I remember one day, when everywhere was covered in snow, Dan told me I had to go in and open up the kitchen. I pulled my wellies on and walked through Sophia Gardens thinking not a single person would turn up. But Dan said: ‘If just one person turns up it will be worth it’.”
There was hardly time to take a breath. But after 18 months Diana started to realise people were coming back regularly.
“The most important thing was to be consistent,” she said. Diana was 53 at the time they got going and it was “difficult”. She said: “Everything went by the wayside but we were in dire straits. We had to make a go of it.
“It was very much a family affair with
Danilo and Nevis helping out. We didn’t pay them a penny. I’m not sure I would have done that for my parents. I even said to Nev ‘you can’t go to uni’. She sacrificed a lot and I’m eternally grateful to them both.”
Now aged 28, Nevis is studying English literature and creative writing at university while Danilo is recently married and living away.
The reins have been taken up by their sister, 33-year-old Claudia. While nothing much has changed inside, outside on Church Street the strip club has been and gone, the pound shop has been replaced with new restaurants, and footfall has increased noticeably.
Diana said: “We were like an island before then, with a strip club next door, a bookies across the road. People didn’t use the street really but there’s lots of fancy new restaurants now, which can only be a good thing.
“I knew it would happen because what we were doing was real and sincere and genuine. People are not stupid – they recognise quality and fair prices. We never hike our prices just because there is an event on in the city, like the rugby at the weekend. I would feel so embarrassed.”
Diana was born in Turin but grew up in Cardiff after her parents moved to Wales from Rome when she was still a tiny baby. Her parents left Italy after the Yugoslav Liberation Army took over their home town of Trieste during the Second World War. Having been born “under the clock in Trieste”, her father Raymond considered himself Italian and would not accept the Yugoslav administration.
They could have ended up anywhere in the world but just happened to settle in Cardiff where Raymond set up his own hairdressers near Howells School.
Diana headed back to Venice, where she worked as a rep, and she met Adriano, who was working in hotel management. They married 38 years ago, moved to a flat in Rome, and had three children.
In 1994 they decided to make a clean break of it and moved to Cardiff to be nearer to Diana’s parents. They are still in the same house they bought more than 25 years ago.
After setting up Cibo in Pontcanna the couple focused solely on turning Cafe Citta into a success.
It wasn’t until Marco Pierre White burst through the doors of their tiny Italian restaurant, proclaiming it to serve the best carbonara that he had ever tasted, that Diana realised maybe they were onto something.
“Marco Pierre White ended up taking us for a pint and was trying to convince us to go on his latest TV show,” she said. “But we were working too hard and I was exhausted.
“At around the same time we had also been listed in The Guardian as one of the best places for lunch.”
People had started talking about this little Italian and there was a buzz around their authentic wood-fired pizzas.
Attention to detail is the reason for their success. There is not a day where a member of the D’Arezzo family is not overseeing service.
Speaking with Diana, you soon get the sense that no detail, however small, goes unnoticed. She has high standards and expects them to be met. In the early days Diana stayed in the kitchen cooking but it was not uncommon for her to step out and ask diners if everything was OK, still with her chef’s hat on.
Even now the way things are done hasn’t changed. “The chefs always have me in the back of their mind,” she said.
Connor Willis, a 23-year-old Welsh speaker, said when he first started working as a waiter it took a while to get used to all the shou t ing between the family. “They were shouting all the time but that’s just the Italian way,” he said.
Everyone speaks Italian including Viorel Zbirna, who mans the oven,
Andrea Amodio, who makes the dough, and Davide Simeone, one of the charming waiters. Even the coffee machine, which pumps out hot strong Italian espresso, is from Italy.
Even on a damp, drab Thursday afternoon the restaurant is a hive of activity. The musical Italian accents sing out over the gentle hubbub of noise from diners enjoying a late lunch. Old-fashioned screens at the windows hide the grey street outside. For the briefest of times you really could be in Italy.
Adriano is bustling in and out. He has been at the restaurant since 7.30am when he sorted deliveries and decided on the specials for that day. Today it’s sea bass and an aubergine dish. Everything is sourced locally, with the fish coming from Ashton’s in the nearby market and the meat from Morgans Butchers.
“That’s very important to us,” said Diana. “We care about the quality of our food. We don’t even have a deep fat fryer so those smells that waft through the street come straight out of our kitchen. It is the smell of garlic roasting and dough cooking.”
The sausage is made to Adriano’s mother’s recipe and the fennel and oregano which infuses many of the dishes is sourced from his home village when he visits every summer. When Adriano leaves for the day Diana comes in for the evening service where she will stay until close.
“We’re like ships passing in the night,” she said. “We even take separate holidays, although we do have a bit more time now.”
But with the restaurant pretty much fully booked every weekend there are no plans to retire just yet.
Diana said: “The most important thing in there are the customers. You have to bend over backwards for them because I would expect that myself.”