Sorellina's opening is only the beginning for Victoria's family next generation in Rochester

Theodore Tollefson, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
·3 min read

Jun. 14—ROCHESTER — The Victoria family is taking its restaurant pedigree to the next generation.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022, marks the opening of the family's newest restaurant in Rochester, Sorellina's, which will be run by the children — cousins Jordan Victoria and Nadia Victoria — of the founders of the family's flagship Victoria's Ristorante & Wine Bar, which has been a Rochester institution for roughly a quarter of a century.

Located off of Apache Drive Southwest in the former Associated Bank/First Federal building, Sorellina's is the first restaurant in the family opened up by cousins Jordan and Nadia Victoria.

Jordan is following in the footsteps of his father, Sid, while Nadia is following in the footsteps of her mother, Natalie. The pair hope to bring a modern dining experience to Sorellina's while keeping with the tradition of the Victoria family.

"We both want to stay true to our roots," said Nadia. "We learned a lot from our parents and kept the authenticity and freshness that Victoria's is never taking shortcuts. Sorellina's will mainly keep Victoria's service theme. The popular items we kept. We have a lot more pizzas being offered here because we'll have a pizza oven in the center of the restaurant that is gonna be a big focal point."

The pizza oven is just one of the many unique focal points that Jordan and Nadia believe will help Sorellina's standout from over pizza joints in town.

Nadia will be in charge of front of house management for Sorellina's and Jordan back of house, with some of his own cooking involved alongside the other chefs at Sorellina's.

"I will be helping to make all the new entrees that we brought on ourselves," Jordan said. "We have a couple of fun salads; our Brussels sprouts salad, it's really fun to make. We do expect to be a hit with our creative pizzas; we got a strawberry, dill pizza that's good and a few other good ones," said Jordan Victoria.

Nadia said what she enjoys most from the menu are what she believes most customers will come to love as well.

"We have an excellent Brussels sprout ricotta salad that is to die for. We're gonna have some fun pieces that you normally don't see," Nadia said. "Then for cocktails, we have a really good rhubarb margarita, some old fashioneds and other fun cocktails that our team put together. We do have some local breweries that we're working with too."

The two local breweries that Sorellina's has partnered with so far are LTS and Forager with beers on tap. Nadia anticipates there will be more partnerships with breweries such as Little Thistle and Thesis Beer Project in the future once both breweries have more time available to make the partnerships possible.

Jordan shared more on how important it is for the both of them to continue what their parents taught them growing up in the restaurant industry, which they have taken on as their own lessons from 25 years of seeing the downtown family restaurant in action.

"While growing up we always kind of enjoyed working in the business where we had been working since we were kids," Jordan said. "We both went to school and through college realized how much we enjoyed working in the industry and how much we wanted to get back, work with our parents and open up a restaurant of our own."

Now that Jordan and Nadia have realized their dream by finally opening a restaurant of their own, the cousins are hopeful to continue the legacy of the Victoria family with Sorellina's for another 25 years alongside the original family business that started it all.