BRODHEADSVILLE, Pa. – A girl who turned her appreciate for cooking into a popular foods truck small business suggests she’ll soon open a brick-and-mortar restaurant featuring her most well known dishes.
Margaret LaFiura mentioned she options to open Sauce cafe in a former Rita’s Italian Ice at 109 Marshal Lane, just off Route 209 throughout from the Tractor Offer retailer.
For the previous 8 many years, LaFiura has operated LaFiura’s Rice All over the Earth food truck, which available a broad variety of rice bowls as perfectly as burgers, tacos and empanadas.
It has been common in Monroe County at street fairs, wineries, breweries and functions at Shawnee ski spot and downtown Stroudsburg.
But “I believe we bought a small weary – my kid’s finding more mature, and we obtained a minor worn out of breaking down and location up,” Lafiura mentioned.
“And it is generally been a desire of mine to have a restaurant – I mean, just to be settled in a cafe and serving a community is my desire occur true. So we discovered a great place, and we pushed ahead.”
After about four months of preparing and operate, the stationary restaurant past week obtained permits required to open, LaFiura claimed. Most of the renovations are carried out – plumbing perform remains, she reported – and “I’m hoping, by the grace of God, to be open in a few months.”
Sauce will seat about 20 inside of, with supplemental tables with umbrellas outdoors.
It will function LaFiuri’s signature paella – flavored rice cooked with meats, seafood and veggies – as very well as other rice dishes and traditional Italian fare.
And, as the title indicates, sauces.
LaFiura reported she expects a single of the signature dishes to be a “flight,” or collection, of sauces – a lot as men and women now buy flights of beer or wine.
“Rice bowls feel to be pretty well-liked,” she claimed. “I make them for vacations, I give them out.
“But the sauces that go along with them, like the lemon garlic sauce, the pesto sauce and the chipotle sauces, individuals adore to dip people love sauces. So I stated, ‘Let’s do a bunch of dipping foodstuff that we can offer you persons to sit about with their family members, provide your individual wine, carry your possess beer, sit down and be comfy, order some dipping appetizers and a bunch of sauces.
“So I explained, ‘Let’s do a flight of sauce – why not?’ So we are setting up on offering a flight of sauces with a bucket of hand-lower fries, onion rings with our arancini.”
The cafe also will provide Pizza Fritta (fried pizza), flatbreads, and lunch burgers, sandwiches and salads. And even breakfasts on weekends.
She reported she observed the former Rita’s site “by probability – by passing by for the reason that it’s in our local community, and I noticed a ‘for lease’ indication on it and it just felt suitable to us and we took advantage of it.” She will lease the site.
LaFiura is at first from New York, exactly where she had a catering enterprise referred to as Intimate Situations.
When the household moved to Pennsylvania, she said, they and a bunch of friends started off a meal club, with family members each month accomplishing “these seriously massive functions, themed.”
“And we selected Spain a person yr,” she explained. “And we resolved to make paella the really standard way. So we imported some pans from Spain – large, 3-foot-diameter kinds – and we had this wonderful paella occasion on an open fire. It was just an remarkable practical experience.
“So we hung the pan up in the garage, and we keep passing it, and I’m, like, ‘There’s acquired to be some way I could capitalize on this pan.’ So I explained, ‘Let’s give it a shot. Let us go to a vineyard. Let’s see if people today genuinely want this things.’ ”
She claimed patrons at the vineyard cherished the paella. “People ended up lining up,” she stated. “So we got thrilled and we started a food truck named Rice About the Globe.”
LaFiura reported she chose the identify Sauces mainly because, “We make a great deal of sauces. I specialize in my sauces. Individuals ask me for my sauces all the time.
“I’ve been cooking for our church for the past 13 many years. I prepare dinner for all the big occasions and I cook dinner for 50, 150 men and women at a time. And I make sauces.
“I imagine sometimes to make a very good food items excellent, at times it requires a terrific sauce. So I made a decision that I was likely to focus in all these sauces and, absolutely sure ample, persons love them. And so I reported, ‘You know what? I’m likely to title it Sauce.’”
Sauce is anticipated to be open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays.
