When the Moon Hits Your Eye

This weeks installment of Trust Your Blackbird takes us to Naples. Naples, Seattle that is. For those of you that aren’t already loyal customers of Tutta Bella, Seattle’s only VPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) certified pizzaria, prepare to become one. You need only a healthy appetite, an hour to spare, and all of your senses intact. And while it easily could be, this is not actually intended to be a review. Instead, it is a brief trip into the heart of a successful restaurant and, perhaps it’s all of the lycopene circulating through this one, but the prognosis is off the charts.

You don’t have to be a business expert to know that opening a restaurant is a terribly risky venture. Nine out of ten fail. With that in mind, I sat down with Tutta Bella’s owner, Joe Fugere, to get a better idea of how one navigates such treacherous waters, and learned that the compass you follow is sometimes the last one you’d expect.

After more than twenty years in the hospitality and food service industry, as well as a brief stint working for a museum quality framing company, Joe found himself, at 42, both unemployed and unsure of a next step. Having dedicated so much of his life to the restaurant business, he believed that perhaps this was his chance to make an escape. So, with an open mind, and a makeshift office courtesy of the historic Panama Hotel, he explored new possibilities and revisited old passions. And it would ultimately be this marriage of old and new that would reunite him with the career path he felt destined to escape.

So, lets examine the two parts of this equation independently. The old refers not just to Joe’s years of experience in the restaurant industry, but also to his Italian heritage. As the story reads, his great-grandparents emigrated here from Italy in 1911, and from the time Joe was young, the absence of authentic Neopolitan pizza was both felt and discussed. In fact, Seattle, unlike Chicago or New York, really lacked a signature pizza all together.

The new part of the equation would come with the distance of his time away from the business. This is true for many entrepreneurs. Something happens and they are forced to take a step back, and while they may return to what they know, it is with new eyes and a fresh set of priorities. In Joe’s case, the distance allowed enough space to remember aspects of the industry that he enjoyed. In particular, the sense of community that a restaurant can foster. At the same time, by reacquainting himself with other passions, namely his love of architecture, the prospect of returning to food service, and building a pizzaria, carried entirely new dimensions for finding fulfillment.

And so, with the opening of the first Tutta Bella in Columbia City, just a hop skip and a jump from his childhood home, he brought the pieces of the pie together so to speak. For the first few months, he didn’t even look at the books. Instead, he set out to sea and trusted his instincts to lead the way. Now, four years later, with two additional locations and no shortage of neighborhood folks lined up for a table, I’d say his instincts served him well.

Initially, I thought by taking a trip into the heart of this local business that I would discover some internal compass that guides the decision making process, but I instead discovered that, in the case of Tutta Bella, the guiding compass is the heart. It is about inviting people into a story, a story that is told through smells, tastes, surroundings, and experiences. And it’s a story that people seem to enjoy reading again and again. I’d love to tell you how it ends, but you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

For more information and locations, click here.

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