Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A family affair at Le Sorelle
A sign that hangs on the wall between the bar and the kitchen at Le Sorelle reads, “Some call it chaos, we call it family,” and that pretty much sums up this family business. “Le Sorelle” references the three sisters who own and operate the Italian restaurant, pizzeria and wine bar.
On any given night you will see Anna, Luisa and Candida Mazzella fully engaged in the dining room taking orders and conversing with diners like old friends. Depending on the evening, family patriarch Salvatore Mazzella joins in the festivities. When business levels dictate, brother Mauro or any one of the sisters’ husbands are just a phone call away to pitch in and help. “Because that’s what families do, we are always there for each other,” explained Candida.
Hospitality runs deep in this family, dating to 1962, when the sisters’ parents, Rosalina and Salvatore Mazzella, opened the pizzeria Ponza in the Bronx. In 1990, they followed their roots back to their hometown, the island of Ponza, Italy, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and opened Ristorante La Palma. Six years later they added a bed and breakfast and hotel rooms. The property boasts the mark of an “albergo diffuso,” an Italian hospitality distinction with specific guidelines developed to revive small, historic villages. Touted for its cuisine and stunning seaside location, Ristorante La Palma has become famous for attracting seasonal international tourists and summer residents with celebrity status. The family continues to travel back and forth in season to manage the business. When Anna and her husband relocated from New York to South Florida for work in 2007, gradually the rest of the family followed. In 2012 the Mazzellas’ love for Italian wines led to another business offshoot when they launched Lytrium Fine Italian Wines, an importing and distribution company based in Oakland Park.
At Le Sorelle, lunch and dinner is served daily in three separate, intimate dining rooms with total seating for 60 guests. An additional 30 seats are planned for an adjoining outdoor patio.
On a recent week night we opted to sit at the wine bar, eager to be entertained by Sergio De Ludicibus, the master chef pizzaiolo, as he operated the wood burning oven. The front row seats proved to be more than we had anticipated as the family dynamics unfolded before our eyes. A steady flow of bantering back and forth in Italian, among very vocal siblings, with laughter and hugs, made us feel as if we were in their home kitchen rather than their restaurant. But confusion set in, from a service standpoint, without a designated person working