The expansion comes as Boston’s Italian restaurant scene is getting bigger and more corporate, while Quaresima is purposefully small and entirely self funded. The new restaurant is also the product of an unusually community-driven process, with the landlord asking neighbors to weigh in on what should fill a vacant storefront.
“I really want to create a space outside with some tables and chairs, like a small bistro you’d find in Paris. That’s the picture I’ve had in my mind,” said Quaresima in an exclusive interview with the Globe.
The building viewed at 1448 Dorchester Avenue in Boston will soon be the location of Bottega Cannuccia.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
A look at the interior of building at 1448 Dorchester Avenue in Boston, which will be redesigned for Bottega Cannuccia.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
The empty shopfront wasn’t simply another vacancy that Quaresima happened to stumble upon, despite looking for the past year for the right space for a second location. Its landlord, developer and Dorchester resident Travis Lee, saw an opportunity to bring in another local operator when his longtime tenant closed in June. Over the years, he’s made a practice of asking community members and neighbors what they want in the storefronts he owns, and, in some cases, letting them help him decide who actually moves in.
When the roughly 1,000-square-foot storefront became available, Lee said he circulated the opportunity among people in his network and heard from five interested parties, including Quaresima and a mother-daughter team behind the concept of Café Bleu. After interviewing the candidates, he narrowed the field to Quaresima and Café Blue and asked people to weigh in.
Lee’s approach is unusual in a city where commercial real estate is often a costly numbers game, and where many independent restaurants can’t survive — let alone open a second location — because of the high rent costs for a business that already has such thin margins.
“I think it’s the right thing to bring people that live and have invested themselves into a specific geographic community into the process,” said Lee. “But I also think it’s good business.”
Lee’s model has produced a string of neighborhood businesses, which included the now shuttered 50 Kitchen, Fresh Food Generation, the store Just Bookish, and more.
For this prominent corner location in the historic Lenane building, the neighborhood’s newest restaurant will be a second outpost from one of Dorchester’s most exciting culinary names. For Lee, that meant betting on a chef whose first restaurant had already demonstrated that the neighborhood would show up for him, and fill his seats.
Over Easter weekend in 2023, Quaresima opened Via Cannuccia, naming it after his childhood street just south of Rome in the seaside town of Anzio. He’s built a career working in restaurants in Italy and France and came to the US in 2013 to work at Petit Robert Bistro, a Parisian-style bistro in the South End.
Chef Stefano Quaresima moved to the United States in 2013, but grew up south of Rome.Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Since striking out on his own in Dorchester — a neighborhood with a food culture shaped by generations of Irish, Cantonese, and Vietnamese immigrants — Quaresima quickly developed a particularly loyal following among restaurant professionals. On their days off, chefs, servers, and bartenders from across the city regularly fill the tables at Via Cannuccia, eating Italian food that hasn’t been Americanized. “I don’t put meatballs on top of spaghetti and I won’t ever put chicken parmesan on the menu,” said Quaresima. “We serve traditional Italian dishes.”
Quaresima said Bottega Cannuccia will be a place where guests can stop in for fresh pastries, like butter croissants, cookies, muffins, scones, cinnamon rolls, sfogliatella, and his favorite pastry, zeppola, which is a rich Italian cream puff that’s served warm, filled with pastry cream and dusted with powdered sugar. He’ll serve sandwiches with Cannuccia’s homemade bread, salads, Italian espresso, and tea from Mariage Frères, a French tea house from Paris that was founded in 1854.
Baked goods at Via CannucciaHandout
At night, the Bottega will serve cheese and charcuterie boards, crostinis, fresh soups, and dishes like bruschetta with smoked trout and sweet potato and saffron aioli and a crocchetta di pasta alla carbonara. The wine list will focus on Italian grapes, such as Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Vermentino from Sardegna, and Nero d’Avola from Sicily. There will be a handful of cocktails, Italian and American beers, ciders, and a selection of Italian amari, cordials, and digestifs.
While restaurant groups are spending millions opening sprawling Italian-focused concepts around the city, Quaresima is taking very different approach, and funding the 30-seat neighborhood shop entirely by him and his wife, Tsedenia Kiros.
“I think parts of the restaurant scene in Boston has lost some of its charm with these really big spaces,” said Quaresima. “It’s why I went with little spaces. They’re unique here. And you have to be attentive on all the details.”
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.
