Crumbs in my 'Stache: Lucatelli’s loses lease

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

By Ben Cannon

One of Victor’s local favorites will be going away for a little while, okay Virginia, honey? Do you understand, darling? It’s not coming back. Ever. Well, maybe one day it might.
Lucatelli’s, which for the last three years has been serving Teton Valley, tasty, regional Italian food in a cozy setting will not reopen from its off-season closure, according to Katy Brickley, who co-managed the restaurant.

The restaurant’s lease in downtown Victor had recently expired, forcing the owners to negotiate without a written contract on a month-to-month basis, Brickley said.
According to the restaurant’s management, the building’s proprietor, landowner David Douglas, who bought it after Lucatelli’s was leased into the space, recently told the restaurant they would have to vacate the location,

One of Douglas’ daughters and her husband, a chef, will relocate from Florida to reopen the space as a new restaurant, said Brett Borschell, a Victor realtor and son-in-law to Douglas.

Borschell said Lucatelli’s monthly rent was undervalued and came at a financial loss to Douglas. He added, “It’s been a family dream to open a restaurant.”
Now, Lucatelli’s proprietors – two women who could not be reached – face not only the loss of a desirable location, but also the town of Victor’s dearth of viable commercial space to offer the restaurant a new home.

“The hardship is that they’re closing, but the real bummer is that there’s no place to go,” said Borschell. “Restaurants are seen as more transient and pose more of a risk than [a commercial space].”

Brickley said she remained optimistic that new Lucatelli’s digs could be located so that the restaurant might reopen. But, with few irons in the fire at the moment, a reopening is likely to be at least months away.

In other news, and while we’re talking about Mediterranean food (or lamenting its loss locally), I recently got a bottle of some really high-end extra virgin olive oil in the mail.
It’s called Lamba, and the company behind it touts it as some of the finest olive oil in the world. Rarified koroneiki olives are handpicked in a specific area on Greece’s island of Crete. The olives are cold-pressed within 10 hours of harvest and the resulting aromatic liquid is eventually packaged in these clean and sexy half-liter corked bottles.

One bottle, shipped from Greece, sells for $60 and you have to order a minimum of two bottles. A special bespoke gift set of the stuff will run you upwards of $200 but, as Time Magazine said, “it came in more gift-box euphoria than anything Tiffany could imagine.”
I have asked some chefs what they might do with an olive oil whose savvy, very Euro marketers sell as “Olive oil or perfume?” What would you do if you laid your hands on some really premium, high-end olive oil? Seriously, let me know.

Photo by STEVEN GLASS
Say goodbye to Lucatelli’s, hopefully not forever.

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Crumbs in my 'Stache: Lucatelli’s loses lease | Planet JH News Article: Restaurants And Dining

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