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From
the Herald-Sun:
BY DANIEL GOLDBERG : The
Herald-Sun
dgoldberg@heraldsun.com <mailto:dgoldberg@heraldsun.com>
Sep 2, 2008
CHAPEL HILL -- Some vocations
are passed on through genes.
Look in the phone book
and count how many funeral home names end in "& Sons." Check
out a major league baseball roster and spot all the juniors.
For Darius Robustelli,
it was something else; something often melted
under mozzarella and topped with pepperoni. As brother Carlo
Robustelli explains, "My dad has a Ph.D. in pizziology."
When
Darius and childhood friend John Runge open Carmine's Italian
restaurant at Eastgate shopping center this month, they'll
officially be doing it on their own. Not so much, perhaps,
if you count
the years spent in Tony Robustelli's restaurants growing
up and the
intervening time watching and tasting in other establishments.
"
I want this to be a family-oriented restaurant," Darius said,
summing up a philosophy that pizziologist Tony Robustelli echoed
later during a phone interview from his home in Dover Plains, N.Y.
That means reasonable prices, good food, local ingredients and
employees who can carry a conversation.
The owners of Carmine's are busy renovating the space formally
occupied by Sal's Pizza and Ristorante for 28 years. That
Chapel Hill staple left when property owner Federal Realty
wanted
to boost rent from $19-per-square-foot to $30-per-square-foot.
But then, building on
tradition isn't a new concept for the proprietors of Carmine's.
Tony Robustelli's parents
left Sarno, Italy, in the 1940s to escape Mussolini. They settled
in the Bronx where Sebastian
Robustelli was a mason and landscaper, but as a country
boy from Sarno,
he
was never comfortable in the city, so he bought a plot
of land
to the north, in Dover Plains. Sebastian spent weekends
at the site building his house out of bricks and sleeping
in a hut while
his family tended to a bakery back in the Bronx.
Eventually
Tony and the rest of the family relocated to Dover Plains,
a nice, quiet place in upstate N.Y.,
a move
that
raises the question, "What
is there for a bored teenage Italian boy to do now?"
Tony Robustelli began work on his advanced degree in
pizza with a family friend and opened his own store
-- appropriately
named
Cousins -- with a relative in 1979. A dynasty was born:
by the time Tony got out of the business a few years
ago he
had opened
15 locations, nine of which he now leases through his
real estate company.
Darius, Carlo, other
siblings and, yes, many cousins all worked in the restaurants,
folding
pizza boxes,
working the register,
serving, doing dishes, cleaning bathrooms.
"
His thing was, why hire a babysitter when you can be with me?" said
Darius.
"
The best psychology class I ever had was behind the counter," said
Carlo Robustelli, now the aid to Chapel Hill
Mayor Kevin Foy. "You
would interact with a professor from Vassar but
also the guy down the street that sold tires."
Tony Robustelli
isn't surprised that his son is opening a restaurant and thinks
those lessons
will
endure. "There are always the
basic things that I say: You have good quality
food with a nice price and you need the family
feel," Tony said. "It's
pretty basic."
© 2008 by The Durham
Herald Company. All rights reserved.
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