The essential ingredient
There are pizzas and there are pizzas, and the good ones have one essential ingredient. Experience.
That's the thing, of course, that is really at the core of all cooking, but especially the Italian kind. And with the arrival in town of the latest food takeaway enterprise, the Macari Star, there is experience in abundance.
The business is a venture by two families well established in Ireland, the Macaris from Kildare and the Iafrates from Carlow. That's why on the treshold of the new premises you see the 'Mac Frate' logo.
At their recent gala opening they gave free samples of their products to what seemed a never-ending line of potential customers. It certainly gave the premises, on the former site of the Egan family's Yankee Star, an immediate reputation. And the inclusion of the 'Star' element in the business name was a salute to the friendship which the new owners had with the Egans for more than two decades.
Both the Macari and Iafrate families come from the Monte Cassino area between Rome and Naples. Allesandro Macari came to Ireland with his family in 1960, and after being educated by the de la Salle brothers in Ballyfermot, Dublin, he married his wife, Luigiamaria Iafrate, in 1977 and they set up their first business in Portarlington, Co Laois. Just a year and a half later they moved to Kildare, buying a shop from local man Tom Waters which they transformed into an Italian takeaway that was to prove a major success.
"My brother Giuseppe, in english Joseph, came to work with us but moved away eighteen months later after he married," Luigiamaria told the Diary on the opening gala night. "He spent some time working in Portlaoise, and then opened a place in Carlow in 1986."
Luigiamaria herself came to Ireland in 1967 and grew up in Parnell Street in Dublin. And if you didn't know she was in the food business all her working life, you'd realise it as she kept an eye on the preparations for the following day after that opening night.
"That's too dry," she said, looking into the mixer that was working dough for the next day's pizzas, and then instructed that more water be added.
"I can hear when the machine is under stress, and know the mix is too hard," she explained to me.
For a while she wasn't sure if it was going to work out, but then the mixture began separating from the sides of the machine to her satisfaction.
"Now look," she said shortly afterwards, pointing at the symmetrical swirling shapes the dough was producing. "It is going right."
Finally, when the machine was stopped, she plunged her hand into the mix. "I've been making pizzas for twenty years, and when I started there were no machines, we mixed the dough by hand. I still test it by hand."
The opportunity to set up in Kilcullen came about when the Egan family decided to cease the business set up by the late Austin Egan many years ago.
"They came to us and asked if we were interested in buying the premises," Joe Iafrate says. "I was actually on the point of buying a place in Carlow to turn into a full Italian restaurant, but I decided to do this instead."
That he should do so, in conjunction with his sister's family-in-law, and therefore put in abeyance his long-held ambition to have a full restaurant, is in itself testament to how Joe Iafrates believes in Kilcullen as a place to do business in the future.
Although his niece Maria jokingly warned him against using the analogy in talking to a journalist, he likened the situation as similar to marrying a woman.
"You think of many things before you do so," he said. "First, can you afford her? Then, are you man enough to make a living with her? And third, can you afford the day-to-day costs? But, in business, you do your paperwork, your research, and you make a decision. And then the rest is up to you."
In terms of the Macari Star, the Diary wasn't into the business of asking how much the investment is in the new enterprise. But anyone looking at the newly built areas, and the most modern and best equipment for food storage, preparation and cooking, would quickly realise that it represents substantial money.
"We thought of coming here twenty years ago, and approached Austin Egan and his family about it," Joe Iafrate says. "But it wasn't the time. Today, Kilcullen is not a small village any more. If for a moment I didn't think that this is going to work, I wouldn't be here."
Joe is the man we've seen up front behind the counter of the business in its first week. It is, though, a joint venture in the best possible families way.
And so we wish both families well. And the Diary welcomes them to Kilcullen, as yet another of the elements which is making our not so long ago small village an increasingly cosmopolitan one.
Brian Byrne.
