Preserving a popular dessert tradition

And in hosting a 50th anniversary celebration last weekend at the store his grandparents, Romolo and Angela Capello, purchased in 1968, Capello’s family was able to celebrate the traditions and the clientele — old and new — that have allowed it to keep its doors open for so many years.

“It’s nice to have a party once in a while,” said Capello. “We had a line out the door, which is what it used to be.”

Though word about the establishment spread by word of mouth when his grandparents ran the store, Capello said many orders are coming in from those coordinating events and company meals or from those who find the store as a recommendation for dessert or ice cream from Yelp! or Google maps in recent years. He said a good portion of those who visit the store travel more than an hour to get there to buy them as gifts or simply as a made-to-order, decadent dessert, noting there aren’t many businesses that specialize in cannoli, especially in the Bay Area.

“The cannoli is like a cult dessert,” he said. “People take it so seriously.”

In 1958, Capello’s grandparents moved to the United States from Sicily — where Capello said the dessert originated some 2,000 years ago — and over 10 years saved enough money as a seamstress and a baker to purchase the store at 81 37th Ave., which previously held a Swenson’s ice cream parlor. Capello, now a 37-year-old South San Francisco resident, grew up in Southern California, but spent summers helping customers at his grandparents’ shop. He said their commitment to high-quality, authentic Sicilian cannoli also meant they were guarded in sharing their recipes, even with Capello.

“When it was time to take over, they basically just brought me back there and showed me how to do everything,” he said. “And even then, I didn’t get to know the recipes until a year and a half or so, I kind of had to earn it.”

To be able to deliver hundreds of carefully prepared desserts to customers across the Bay Area and prepare dozens more for customers who come to his store daily, Capello said he gets the best results from starting early in the morning to make cannoli shells — which take some three hours to make from scratch and need a day to “rest” after they are fried. He said cocoa and red wine are behind the shells’ aroma and color, and he coats the insides of many of the shells with chocolate, a step his grandfather added to the process some 20 years ago, both for the taste and because it keeps the shells crunchier longer.

He said the cream filling can be made in much less time using a special ricotta cheese he purchases from New York — the one ingredient Capello is willing to bet makes his cannoli number one.

“That’s what makes our filling the best,” he said. “It’s all about texture.”

He said in recent years he has experimented with making cream in several flavors, including chocolate amaretto, pistachio and strawberry, learning each time how the ingredients affect the consistency of the cream. Capello said the cannoli kits his shop started selling a few years ago have become very popular among customers who are interested in adding filling to the shells just before they serve them at home or give them as gifts. And after making cannoli of all shapes, sizes and flavors, he hasn’t seemed to find one that disappoints.

“People want it all now,” he said. “I feel like we’ve opened a Pandora’s box.”

Capello has also continued making his grandparents’ homemade ice cream in flavors ranging from caramel sea salt and mint chip to spumoni, an Italian ice cream dessert with three flavors echoing the colors of the Italian flag — pistachio, vanilla amaretto and strawberry. Though his grandparents made almost everything in the shop when they ran it, Capello said he has enjoyed hiring a team of almost 20, many of whom have attended local high schools and come back during summers and during the holiday rush to help.

Capello said his wife Yelena Capello and 4-year-old son, Nicholas, have joined him in the shop for countless hours, adding his grandparents have been very happy to see the business continue on in the family. And after years of perfecting the many steps to making cannoli, Capello said he’s come to look forward to the three hours it takes each day to prepare shells.

“At first, it used to be a chore, but now, it’s like my three hours,” he said. “It’s really like a mind-clearing exercise for me.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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