How Café Roma turned a tiny bistro by the train tracks into a SLO institution

When the two younger owners of the 43-year-old Café Roma restaurant in San Luis Obispo say their recipes have are based on their mother’s Piedmontese recipes, they can prove it.

Mom Maria Rosa Rizzo, 85, was the restaurant’s chef for more than two decades, but she’s still “very involved in Café Roma’s menu creation and other decisions with her sons and the current chef, Carlo Ochetti from Italy.

“She likes to keep an eye on things,” her middle son, Marco Rizzo, said.

Maria Rosa was doing just that Nov. 30, as she bustled about before the restaurant opened for the day at 4:30 p.m. She brought in some holiday décor from her San Luis Obispo home, answered the phone in her still-heavy Italian accent, directed young staff members and warmly greeted a visitor.

Brothers Marco and Saro Rizzo (a San Luis Obispo attorney) and their mother co-own the Tuscan-style restaurant that she and husband Joseph Rizzo launched in 1980.

According to Café Roma’s website, the eatery has been serving its notable “Northern cuisine with a French flair” ever since.

“He bought the little rundown restaurant before I ever saw it,” Maria Rosa said of the rainy night when her husband told her what he’d done, then showed her their future. “It was quite a shock.”

They upgraded it and hired some staff, getting ready to open.

Then she asked him, “but who’s going to cook?”

“You are,” he told his wife, a classically trained chef from Varzo, Italy. “But only for a little while.”

Then, Joseph Rizzo’s first debilitating stroke five years later left him wheelchair-bound.

So Maria Rosa took over running the entire restaurant, while also raising their teen sons and caring for her husband.

“It was like having my fourth child,” she reminisced about the restaurant. And in a way, it still is.

Joseph Rizzo died 15 years later.

SLO restaurant’s Italian recipes reflect the owners’ heritage

Many of Maria Rosa’s recipes — with her own culinary twists from all over Italy and Switzerland — haven’t changed since then, quite simply because customers like them just the way they are, Marco Rizzo said.

Others have been updated a bit by the two brothers and Chef Ochetti, and any new dishes are added slowly, only after they’ve proven to fit the vibe and please the customers.

“We like to create dishes from my mother’s hometown and areas around it,” Marco Rizzo said. “We try to stay true to her techniques and recipes.”

Any decisions always are overseen by the family matriarch.

As longtime Café Roma customer Margaret Zuech said of Maria Rosa during a recent visit, “She is the commander.”

Zeuch has been a Café Roma customer for about 40 years, she estimated. “We make it a point to go to Café Roma about once a week,” she said.

The two families bonded over winemaking and great Italian food.

Margaret and Romeo Zeuch founded the Piedra Creek Winery in 1984 and became friends with the Café Roma clan to the extent that the Rizzo sons “used to make their wine on our equipment in Edna Valley.”

The Rizzo family’s history includes classical music and lots of travel

Joseph Rizzo was born in Massachusetts and before becoming a restaurateur, had a two-decade career as an acclaimed oboist under the direction of such legendary classical-music conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini and Arthur Fiedler. His musical resume included work for Disney and on “Around the World in 80 Days.”

After retiring as a musician, he traveled to Italy to attend culinary school and met his wife in Zermatt, Switzerland.

The couple then moved to Hollywood, opening the famed Corsican and Robaires bistros on La Brea Avenue, before returning to Italy to raise their three sons after the Watts Riots erupted in Los Angeles.

After a stint in Las Vegas, the Rizzos the eventually moved to San Luis Obispo in November 1979 and bought the small, ramshackle Dave’s Hacienda restaurant within the Park Hotel at 1819 Osos St. near the train tracks.

That became Café Roma, reportedly the area’s first restaurant focusing solely on Italian food.

In 1998, Café Roma moved from the hotel to the restaurant Saro and Marco Rizzo designed and built just across the street at 1020 Railroad Avenue, a space that features dark wood, antique-textured walls, high ceilings, stained glass, draped windows and six elegant, red Murano glass chandeliers.

Marco Rizzo assembled, installed, maintains and even cleans those hanging treasures himself, he said..

Since the move, the Rizzos have been active in the Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County and helped establish the city’s 1894 Historic Railroad District directly across Railroad Avenue from Café Roma.

There’s work beyond the restaurant for the younger Rizzos

Saro Rizzo, 57, is an attorney with a law degree from Santa Clara University. He’s been married for 16 years and has two sons.

Marco Rizzo, 58, has a master’s degree in business from Cal Poly and co-owns Per Bacco Cellars, an Edna Valley vineyard. He’s been married for 25 years and has three daughters.

Eldest son Denis Rizzo, 62, is an entrepreneur in the U.S. and Europe.

Some of the third generation have shown some initial interest in continuing the San Luis Obispo restaurant founded by their grandparents, Maria Rosa said. Others have different plans, she said, like Cal Poly senior Alesandra Rizzo, already a private pilot with a post-graduate plan to become a commercial pilot.

From carpaccio to osso buco and pizza, Cafe Roma makes it from scratch.

The classically elegant Italian food and setting, charm and tradition are qualities that the Rizzos have emphasized through the years in a restaurant that Café Roma’s Google listing bills as a “longtime, white-tablecloth Italian joint with a casual, old-world feel & an extensive wine list.”

“We make all of the dishes in house, from pastas and raviolis. … The chef makes our own pizza dough every morning with a mother starter,” Marco Rizzo said. Then there are specialties such as the “osso buco with just a hint of tomato, but mostly onions, carrots and celery” with the braised veal shanks, he said of one of his favorite dishes at Café Roma.

Among other fan favorites are “our pappardelle with short-rib ragu, ricotta and spinach ravioli with a black truffle sauce, mezzi rigatoni alla vodka, as well as our Piedmontese steak tartare,” he said.

“For many years,” Rizzo added “we were the only restaurant serving carpaccio de carne,” raw tenderloin beef sliced paper thin and served with capers, light mustard, arugula and Parmesan.

“We still make a bit of our pancetta, and it takes about three weeks to make and cure,” he explained about the salt-curing, peppering and hanging process.

When Café Roma’s customers learn that pancetta is made from the same pork cut as Asian pork belly, “they love it,” he added.

They use local ingredients whenever possible, Rizzo said, including from Rinconada Dairy, Javier Martinon Farms, Achievement House, Ray’s Own Brand, Talley Farms and farmers markets.

Breads are delivered daily from Pan d’Oro.

Gluten-free options are offered for some of the dishes, and they try to accommodate others who have dietary restrictions.

Lots of space and a dash of fun are part of Cafe Roma

Among Café Roma’s specialties are its facilities for special events and parties, and a willingness to have fun along the way.

Three separate areas accommodate up to 100 guests for meals, cocktail receptions and other celebrations and meetings.

“Probably the most fun event we had was about 10 years ago, when we rolled back to the prices,” Marco Rizzo said. “People were lined out the door to taste (items from) the original menu, at the original prices.”

But, he adds, diners every day can still enjoy meals based on Maria Rosa’s original recipes, and she’s often there to make sure those traditions continue to be honored and shared, as they have been for 43 years and counting.

More about Cafe Roma

Café Roma is open from 4:30 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and till 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, closed on Sundays. It’s open on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, but remains closed on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Labor Day.

They take reservations and do catering for offsite events, and provide meals for takeout or delivery through Meal Club (place orders with Cafe Runner).

Half-price wines are available on Tuesdays, known as “Raid the Wine Cellar” days. Marco Rizzo estimates that the cellar includes more than 3,500 bottles of wines, from about 100 wineries. The house specialty wines bear his Per Bacco label, of course.

For more information, visit www.caferomaslo.com, call 805-541-6800, or follow the restaurant on Instagram

or on Facebook.