Barbershop offers cuts and cappucino
Fausto and Emilio Ferrari were part of a steady migration of Italians who came from Fuscaldo, a small town in the southern province of Calabria, to Cincinnati.
It was common for Fuscaldese to work in Cincinnati's tailoring shops, or to become barbers.
Barbering is what the Ferrari brothers went into. Fausto came first and started working for Angelo Bruno at his barbershop in 1957. Emilio came over in 1969 and learned the trade. They cut hair and gave shaves in a tiny three-chair shop on Garfield Place for 50 years.
Emilio's grandsons, Austin and Tony Ferrari, often visited their grandpop's store for a cut.
"Until I got too cool, and wanted my hair styled," said Austin.
They grew up in the closeknit Ferrari family, with family dinners and plenty of home-cooked Italian food. Like quite a few of their generation of Cincinnati Fuscaldese, Austin and Tony went into the food business. Tony owns the Hillside Supper Club restaurant in San Francisco, where Austin is the sommelier. They own a coffee shop in the Potrero Hill neighborhood called Provender.
But their hearts have always been at least partly in Cincinnati.
So when Fausto retired, and then Emilio died in 2015, the grandsons hated to see the shop disappear. So they took it over. They cleaned it up, just enough. There are still all kinds of souvenirs and reminders of the two Italian barbers and their customers: postcards stuck into the mirrors, decades of shavers and other barbering gadgetry.
They reupholstered the old chairs (which were made in Cincinnati), and they installed a sleek Italian Marzocco espresso machine in the window. The shop is called Ferrari Barbershop and Coffee Co. They have a couple of barbers lined up to rent the chairs.
But you can stop in for coffee, just the classic drinks such as espresso and cappuccinos. They have a Gibraltar on the menu, which is San Franciscan for a cortado served in a glass.
Austin and Tony are dividing their time between Cincinnati and San Francisco. They have more plans for Cincinnati. They'll have news soon for Mom n' Em, a coffee shop based in an Airstream trailer in the city's Camp Washington neighborhood that they're opening with their mother.