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Nelson LaCaria and Philipp Carneiro,
Grappa Ristorante,
Toronto, Ont.
By Gary Lipovetsky, President of MenuPalace.com
 Nelson LaCaria, 26, and Philipp Carneiro, 24, learned the ins and outs of the restaurant business the old-fashioned way — by working in their aunt and uncle’s Italian eatery from the time they were old enough to wipe a grease-stained skillet. Year after year they mastered another element of the business, until they were finally ready to run the show themselves, at which point there was only one thing left to do — buy the place.
MP: Your aunt and uncle opened Grappa in 1992. What were you guys doing at the time?
NL: In 1992, I was coming here for dinner with my family and running around like all kids do. But in ’97, I started working here as a dishwasher. We both started as dishwashers and worked our way up. We moved on to salads and then came into the dining room. Slowly, we learned everything from my uncle. He was like our idol. We looked up to him.
PC: We basically learned everything on the spot.
MP: When did you know you wanted to make your careers in this business?
NL: In Grade 4, we all wrote about what we wanted to do when we got older. I wrote that I wanted to own a restaurant.
PC: I told my mom when I was 10 that I wanted to work here.
MP: College St. and Little Italy is one of the most competitive restaurant strips in Canada. What do you guys do to make Grappa stand out from all of the other restaurants here?
PC: We’re pretty fair — we’re not here to take advantage of anyone. We do our best and hope that everyone that comes to Grappa sees we’re different from many of the other places on the strip. It’s more family oriented here. Nobody is going to ignore you, and if there is a problem we’ll take care of it for you. We put out a good product and hopefully everybody enjoys it and comes back. So far so good.
NL: To be successful you have to love what you do. You also have to know what the competition is doing, and make sure you’re doing it better. But the key is to remember people; know their names and what they like to eat and drink, and always have it for them. You want to build a bond with your customers, so when they come to see you it’s like they’re coming to visit their family.
MP: How would you describe the cuisine here?
NL: There are a lot of Northern Italian dishes as well as from different regions in Italy, and then there are our specials. We also offer a daily prix fixe menu — it is $40 and we like to incorporate fresh market cuisine. We really like to use fresh product. We don’t get companies to bring produce here; we go out to the market every Thursday at 8 a.m. and we select our own fresh product.
MP: Do you think it improves the quality of the food your chef puts out?
NL: Yes. My uncle did the same thing from day one. He went to Kensington Market, and that’s why we like to do it.
PC: It’s almost like an education when you go to the market. You always learn something and you get a chance to try things you normally might not try.
MP: What are some of the signature dishes at Grappa?
NL: Our crème brûlèe is the best in the city. Our chef’s beef carpaccio is also amazing. He marinates it with sugar, herbs and onions for a minimum of 30 days, and then he thinly slices it and serves it with olives, lemon juice and pepper and some parmesan cheese. It’s a dish with so much flavour — it’s an appetizer, but a lot of people will have it as an entrée because it’s that good.
PC: Our veal chop is also phenomenal — it’s like something out of the Flintstones. We will serve it with some mashed potatoes and sometimes we do a mushroom risotto. It is definitely a customer favourite.
MP: You guys are pretty young but you have a lot of experience, too. What’s the toughest part about owning a restaurant.
PC: The hours — we don’t have much time for anything else socially.
NL: The toughest part is the slower nights. You are always going to have slower nights, but I catch myself thinking about what we can improve on. What can we bring to the table that’s going to make us a little more busy?
My uncle also never advertised — he relied on word-of-mouth and that was it. We started advertising this year with MenuPalace, which has been great. The hardest thing to do is to get a customer to walk through the front door, but then they get in here and they’re like, “Wow. Everything is so nice here, I wish I had come sooner.” Our biggest complaint is that our portions are too big.
MP: Do your aunt and uncle come and check in on you to make sure things are going smooth?
NL: We bought the place in July 2009, and for the first two months he was probably a bit nervous. But he would hear from his old customers that the boys were doing a really good job.
MP: Obviously, when you’re part of something and, all of a sudden, you’re running the show, there’s a desire to put your own spin on it. But at the same time, you don’t want to fix something that’s already working great. Has that been challenging?
NL: My uncle was not an Internet guy, so for the past year and a half we have been sending out a newsletter. Every month or two we tell our customers what we’ve been doing with the restaurant; any changes to the menu, and we ask for feedback. So they have been helping us out with a lot of the decisions we make.
PC: They like to be involved. Many of them have seen us grow up, so they feel comfortable giving us their opinion.
NL: And they want us to succeed, too. |