Beloved Storico Customer,

 

As we all struggle to work around these very challenging times, we at Storico had to make some changes first and foremost to make YOU as happy as we can!! YOU are what we work incessantly for, YOU are here to enjoy yourself while we work hard from 8 am to 1am, every single day.

 

We had to fight to stay alive during COVID-19, and just like YOU, we had many challenges. Today we all live in a job market that’s as tight as it has ever been, there are many bottlenecks to get our imported goods from Italy to the U.S., increased costs for transporting those goods, and the highest inflation since 1946 at around 8.5%. 

 

In order to stay open and attempt to maintain our quality for YOU to enjoy, here’s what we hope YOU will understand if not celebrate!!

 

MODIFIERS - We do not modify our menu items!!

 

Here’s why… ALL of our ingredients are imported from Italy, our pastas are made daily in our production facility as are our sauces. Just as an example, our Bolognese sauce takes  7 hours to make from scratch, then chilled so it can be transported to our 3 restaurants with our company van.  It is then gently brought back to optimal temperature and ultimately mixed with our fresh pasta and brought to YOU.

 

The job market is so tight we run our kitchen line with less cooks than ever, and due to the increased cost of pretty much everything we have to compensate that by working in high volumes. Asking to modify a dish means that YOUR waiter, who is probably on a double and works 12 hours straight, must take note of the modifiers, bring them to the kitchen Sous-chef who in turn has to instruct his line cooks to modify a dish they have been trained  for years to make in a very specific way, in turn creating a delay in what would have been an orchestrated timing to get all YOUR party’s dishes to the table at the same time.

 

If YOUR waiter says “I’m sorry but we can’t change this item” please know that our owners and managers have had tens of meetings with them and our kitchen crew, this is not them being lazy or arrogant, they are doing their job just like YOU do yours.

 

PORTION SIZES – It takes a lot of math!!!

 

Every morning at 7:00am and for 8 hours, our 6 incredible pasta specialists hand-make about 400 LBS of fresh pasta for our 3 restaurants. They open 50 LB bags of Italian flour, put it in a mixer the size of a motorcycle, add hundreds of hand-cracked farm eggs (our eggs are produced by www.risenshinefarm.com and their hens live a better life than most of us LOL), pour gallons of filtered water, and turn huge dough balls into the beautiful pasta YOU have or are about to enjoy. All done exclusively by hand, yes by hand!!

 

Once the pasta arrives at each restaurant, our seasoned cooks divide the hundreds of LBS of pasta into portions that have been dictated by our Chefs and owners according to the specific amount of sauce and other ingredients that will ultimately become what we believe is a good and healthy portion. 

 

We have been open for 6 years and have hosted 1,215,630 of YOU as of May 20th, 2022. That’s a LOT of people right??!! We adjusted our portion sizes in the years according to how much food is on average left in YOUR plates so that we can avoid waste and overproduction. We have now reached a good balance of how much food is sent out compared to what goes in the garbage.  Our garbage has been dramatically reduced which also helps with labor as there are less trips to the dumpster which in turn reduces the garbage our trash collection trucks have to handle. It’s definitely better for the environment as well. 

 

PASTA DOESN’T WAIT

 

Each one of our menu items has a different cooking time. Cacio e Pepe may take our cooks less than 2 minutes to prepare while a lasagna may take 20 minutes. YOU, rightly so, expect your dishes to come to the table exactly at the same time, right?? We therefore time the shortest cooking items to happen a few minutes before the longest cooking item is prepared. We are talking laser precision here!! It may happen that one dish has been delayed as we serve up to 900 people a day, most during a 2 hour window.

 

We STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU to start eating, especially pasta, as it goes cold fast and quickly becomes not so good. Know that the dish that is late will make it to your table as fast as we can, maybe each one of you share a fork of what you’re having with your fellow diner in the meantime?? 

 

BE NICE, BREATHE

 

Nobody is perfect, everyone has a story and many challenges to overcome and our crew, just like YOU, makes their best effort. Be nice, it goes such a long way with people who are working long hours, sometimes 60/70 hours a week to prepare for YOUR couple hour experience. If something your server does or says makes you angry, BREATHE, they’re definitely not intentionally doing that. Ask to speak to a manager, we have plenty around, they will be able to help us understand what went wrong and determine the best way to correct the issue. 

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YOU

 

Finally please know that we are here thanks to YOU, which is why we colored it in red, just so it’s clear to all how much dedication we put into what we do. Thank YOU for understanding and helping us make sure we all have a wonderful experience together.

 

            - Storico Team