OUR STORY
The first La Fornaretta Restaurant opened in Pasadena in 1997. For nearly 7 years, La Fornaretta and its sister restaurant in San Marino, Caffé La Fornaretta, delighted the Los Angeles area with authentic Sicilian dishes prepared from the finest and freshest imported and local ingredients according to family recipes passed down for generations. Our Puttanesca sauce, tangy and tantalizing, had been voted one of LA Times' Top 10 Best Dishes in Los Angeles. Regular customers returned for our daily seafood specials: generous portions of fresh fish - tuna, halibut, salmon, swordfish and mussels - delicately seasoned with elegant truffle oil and rare saffron.
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Many of our traditional family recipes were handed down by Giovanni Lo Coco, the grandfather of my children, Gilberto & Gianluca Di Lorenzo. For over 30 years, Giovanni—from his self-titled restaurant, Lo Coco's— thrilled the San Francisco Bay Area with his famous light and crusty pizza. And now, La Fornaretta's irresistably delicious Schiacciata flat bread, served complementary, is made from the same dough recipe Giovanni passed on. It is served warm, with extra virgin olive oil for dipping, and offers a wonderful, chewy accompaniment to any appetizer, salad, or entrée.
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In 2005, after the building in which our original La Fornaretta restaurant operated was sold, we decided to close the restaurant, returning north to be closer to family, and reopened the new La Fornaretta in a historical fruit packing shed located along the first American transcontinental railroad. Southern California's loss was to be Newcastle's gain!
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Like a phoenix reborn from ashes, our new La Fornaretta immediately began packing in crowds hungry for traditional Sicilian cuisine. Drawing visitors from the greater Sacramento area, as well as travelers en route to and from San Francisco, Reno, and resorts in the Lake Tahoe region, we delight our patrons with mouth-watering dishes and warm, friendly service. La Fornaretta invites you to join our family, to relax in our atmosphere of traditional Italian hospitality and let us prepare our finest Sicilian cuisine especially for you.
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