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Business & Tech

From Italy to Evergreen Park, New Restaurant Offers Authentic Fare

A new restaurant featuring Northern Italian cuisine including wood-oven pizzas and a delicious wine list recently opened in the neighborhood. Co-owners Bill Mulchrone and Potito Conza hope to make you feel like you're in Italy with their menu offerings.

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Open for seven months, the Northern Italian cuisine hotspot is co-owned by Bill Mulchrone and Potito Conza. Specializing in brick-oven pizzas and good wine, the restaurant has taken residence in Mulchrone’s brothers’ building, 3020 W. 95th St., which used to house Mulchrone's Steak and Seafood restaurant.

“We’re a brick-oven pizzeria place; we have a little wood fire brick oven,” Mulchrone said. “Each pizza is handmade and baked in the oven right there. We have a lot of specialities of Northern Italian plates. We’re trying to bring a little authentic pizza to Evergreen Park.”

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Conza moved from Northern Italy to the area about a year ago, Mulchrone said, in order to open up the restaurant. While they mainly opened up shop in Evergreen Park because they had access to a vacant space, they have enjoyed being in the community and getting to know its residents.

“We’re still pretty new here,” Mulchrone said. The duo has made community connections through organizations like the and hopes to become more involved that way.

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“We feel it’s important we stick together here in Evergreen Park,” Mulchrone said. “Being part of the Chamber of Commerce is letting (people) know we’re here to stay.”

One of the ways the restaurant is looking to expand its business and footprint in the community is by opening up a wine store in its space within the next few months. About 97 percent of its wine list is Italian and has proven to be a hit with its patrons.

“We eventually kind of want to convert it into a wine store also,” Mulchrone said. “We’re working on it right now. Hopefully it will be put together in a couple of months. (The wines) are not something people are used to, but they’re delicious. We’ve had a good response to the wine so that’s why we’re moving ahead with selling wines.”

The wine, along with the house specialties such as red wine-infused cavatappi pasta with meat sauce, have helped the response to the restaurant be “very positive,” Mulchrone said.

“Obviously there’s been some bad with the good,” he said.

While this is Mulchrone’s first restaurant–he was formerly a commodities trader before going into cooking in 1996–his partner has had several restaurants before, which has been useful to the business. The two met in Paris, where Mulchrone lived for four years after training in cooking in San Francisco and working in New York.

“It was from Paris to Evergreen Park,” he said.

Despite opening when the economy was not at its best—“Yeah, our timing wasn’t the greatest there,”—Mulchrone is glad to bring authentic Italian fare to the community.

“We have to trudge through it. Any day we’re paying the bills is a good day,” he said. “My hair is grayer. ..It’s a lot of hours, trying to make the ends meet.”

To help make ends meet, both owners started the business working in the kitchen making the food. While the fare is authentic, they have also thrown in menu items that people are used to.

“We both started off in the kitchen area, doing pizzas in the kitchen until we got the staff together,” Mulchrone said. “We’re almost there. We’re mainly in the business side now. We call ourselves ‘chef-owners.’”

Closed on Mondays to give themselves a small weekly breather, the restaurant is open from 4 a.m. to 12 a.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with the kitchen usually open until about 10:30 p.m. on the weekends.

“We’re trying to get better every day here,” Mulchrone said. “We’re hoping people will appreciate it.”

To find out more about Cavatappi, call the restaurant at (708) 576-3055.

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