“How you doin’?”

Dominick Giresi Sr. is behind the front counter to greet costumers in Italian Kitchen. Hand-prepared or imported meats hang over his head; fresh homemade pizzas are tossed in the oven behind him.

Giresi’s son (also named Dominick) just opened this gourmet delicatessen, pizzeria and market in the fall, and their new menu reflects a big interest in Fairfield students: filling varieties at competitive deli prices – delivered.

 And this is not just food.

 “When you make a sandwich for Oprah and she says, ‘Oh my God,’ you know you’ve got something,” Italian Kitchen’s owner Dominick Giresi Jr. told The Mirror. (He previously owned a private café at an airport where he served Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman and other celebrities regularly.)

Passion is what he says sets his kitchen apart from his many neighboring Post Road restaurants.

The Giresi family boasts a wide array of Italian dishes and no frozen food in this new Italian culture hub. Lunches and dinners are made fresh daily or upon request. The bread is brought in fresh from New York City every morning.

“I offer a quality pizza for New Yorkers who are away from home,” said Giresi.

An extensive barrier of fresh pastries and cheeses runs parallel to the freezers of homemade pasta. The floor is a spacious flow of white tile with neat mounds of Italian imports – all for sale. There are tables for immediate eating, too.

As the owner, Giresi decided to bring this robustly authentic cooking away from his family’s other eateries in New York City after an adolescence working in a family deli and a very successful crash course in corporate America.

By his early twenties, Giresi owned a marketing company and numerous properties across the nation. His friends told him he had made it, but then, “I no longer cared about the money,” he said, “I made the money … none of that matters at the end of the day if you don’t have pride in it.”

Giresi is now 25. He has returned to the family business of passionate cooking. “We don’t make sandwiches, we build sandwiches,” he said. “We’re architects here.”

When Giresi looked at the town of Fairfield, he found a booming restaurant scene. “Obviously this is a food town,” he said. He also noticed the train station’s proximity and was interested in delivery options.

Giresi’s father originally was against a lot of his son’s plan. After knocking on doors downtown, however, feedback became persuasive. “They said they’d love it – they need it.”

It was the town support that sealed the deal for Giresi to open, despite his father’s skepticism. “I talked to everybody; they were nice! That was the icing on the cake,” he said.

Some of Giresi’s next steps focus on Fairfield students exclusively. He is in talks with Fairfield University to become a StagCard-payable merchant with discounts.

Junior Allessandro Iannuzzi calls Manhattan home in between his semesters at Fairfield. He has already gone to Italian Kitchen twice, but has not had it delivered.

“Anybody that came up to visit me at school, I would bring them there,” he said. “That’s good quality even in New York, like, that’s the kind of place you’d find in Little Italy.”

Italian Kitchen is open every day. Lunch options include lasagnas, spaghetti and meatballs, and ravioli at $7.99 per pound. Plain pizzas are less than $12, and buying two of them with a menu coupon comes with 12 free garlic knots.

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.