For a lot of families, the kitchen is the most important place in the home. Nowhere is that truer than at Caruso’s Italian Restaurant.
“A lot of times you see families congregate in kitchens,” said Ande Motzkin, the restaurant’s general manager.
Since the 1930s, Caruso’s has been a family gathering spot, hosting everything from prom dates to funeral repasts.
“We have a lot of weddings, a lot of proposals,” Motzkin said. “A lot of bringing babies home, a lot of stopping here for food. Graduations, a lot of remembrances, funerals, just the family events, the stories, it just blows my mind.”
Caruso’s has been owned and operated by the same family for decades. Motzkin, who came aboard in 2008, said most of what is served is from her great-grandfather’s recipes. One peek at the menu and it is clear this is scratch-made, old-style Italian American cuisine — real comfort food, Motzkin said.
Caruso’s shows its love of its patrons through food. Guests can start their meal with the antipasto platter, which includes salami, cheese, baby corn and carrot curls on a bed of fresh greens (starts at $11). Also, wedding soup ($8 a cup) is among the appetizers.
Follow this with the ever-present pasta: penne, rigatoni, spaghetti or linguine ($16) or ravioli ($18) topped with a choice of three sauces: Caruso’s, mushroom or marinara. Alfredo, meat, pesto, rosato and diavolo sauces are available, too ($4). Add a protein such as chicken or clams ($8), meatballs or sausage ($9) or shrimp or scallops ($12) and there’s a meal.
However, the menu doesn’t stop there.
Choose an entree, Caruso’s has them. There’s the classic chicken parmesan ($22), and chicken alfredo ($25) to name a couple, but because the staff at Caruso’s knows its diners, there is also vegetarian lasagne ($18).
Sometimes, after a long day at work or school, pizza sounds good. Caruso’s to the rescue. Try a sausage and pepperoni pizza (starts at $15) or choose from any of the 16 available toppings.
Finish it with the seven-layer ice cream spumoni, limoncello cake, cheesecake, cannoli or gelato ($7). The well-known tiramisu is $9.
“There’s something in a lot of my family’s souls that food is love,” the fourth-generation Caruso said. “It’s sharing. It’s a connection and we just really feel that inside. If you slow down from the business long enough and take a walk through the dining rooms, you can see and feel that. It is literally what keeps me going.”
Winding road
Caruso’s Italian Restaurant is built like a maze. In fact, the restaurant stretches over an entire city block.
“I tell everybody that’s why it takes a long time for the food to come out,” Motzkin said.
In the back kitchens, the cooks and chefs display their pride. For example, Daniel Hazelton makes the sausage. In the late afternoon, he was “braiding” sausage links, or creating equally sized, 4-inch links out of one long fat rope of sausage.
Beside him, near a sink, were little piles of unrecognizable substances. These little piles could not possibly hold the uncooked mixture he was about to push into them and yet, with the extruding machine he does just that.
“It’s like a balloon,” Motzkin said.
In the next room, nine-year Caruso veteran and head chef Leslie Cordova worked an egg dough that would eventually become ravioli. Made with parsley and spinach, the dough was, incredibly, green.
To prepare the dough to be made into pasta, Cordova sent it through an industrial pasta machine and, when it came out the other end, she dusted it with flour, folded it and sent it through again. She repeated the process until the dough was just a long, narrow flat green sheet. In front of her was a wood ravioli mold, also dusted with flour, waiting for the dough.
“Leslie is probably one of the few people who knows exactly how wide and how long (the dough) needs to be to go onto the mold,” Mitzkin said.
In the front of the house, hosts greeted diners and showed them to their tables. Everyone works to see that Caruso’s guests are welcomed and taken care of. Outside on the patio, with its newly renovated fish tanks and fountain, server Laurie Sherman opened a bottle of red wine and poured it into the glass for a guest’s first sip. She was very careful not to spill.
If the weather is fine, ask to be seated on the patio. With its tall Roman pines, serene fountain and colorful lights, the space is a real oasis in the middle of a busy city.
Motzkin is proud of her family legacy here in Tucson but also for something that falls into her personal philosophy of love and food. Caruso’s is also about “second chances” for people.
“A lot of people look to restaurant work for second chances,” she added. “My husband says I don’t make food, I save people.”
Caruso’s Italian Restaurant
434 N. Fourth Avenue, Tucson
520-624-5765
carusositalian.com
Hours:
4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday
11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday - Sunday
Closed Monday
