LaCucina Express spices up the kitchen

Date: 6/21/2011

June 20, 2011

By Katelyn Gendron

Assistant Managing Editor

LONGMEADOW — LaCucina Express has a new location and a fresh way of doing business thanks to the vision of the company's president, Michael Cimmino.

The Longmeadow site, 791 Williams St., is an expansion of the Hampden location on Allen Street, but with a twist on pizza all its own. Cimmino enlisted the help of Michael Fairholme of Wood Fired Consulting in San Francisco, Calif., to spice up the pizza recipe and the way their chefs do business in the kitchen.

"We're taking his classic menu and passing it through the prism of classic Neapolitan pizza," Fairholme explained during a recent training session with staff in Longmeadow. "I'm going to help them adapt their New York City recipe concept to more authentic Neapolitan hearth style pizza. We've put that style on a diet and injected a lot more flavor."

Cimmino said he hired Fairholme to train his staff thanks in large part to his "very impressive resume," which includes several years working with world-renowned chef Wolfgang Puck and 12 years in Italy where he trained with a master pizza maker before returning to the United States in 2007.

Fairholme's method also allows the staff at LaCucina Express to make pizzas faster with a cook time of two to three minutes and a peak temperature of 900 degrees in the dome of the oven.

Fairholme noted he also experimented with the restaurant's pizza sauce and dough, opting for a tomato with "a higher sugar to acid ratio" for the sauce and a "special flour from Napoli" in order to make the dough "lighter."

When asked how patrons like the new pizza since opening in Longmeadow on May 15, Cimmino replied, "It's very well received ... It's a very thin crusted pizza that is more enjoyable and people have really [taken to it]."

He noted business was especially busy during the multi-day power outage that hit Western Massachusetts because of the June 1 tornado. "We were inundated with business," Cimmino added, noting that business has been "very steady" since then.

"We're seeing about 300 patrons per day," he said.

When asked what the next step for the business would be, Cimmino replied that delivery via Smart Cars would be available soon.

For more information about LaCucina Express or its menu, visit http://lacucinaexpress.net.