This article was first published in the Morgan Hill Times on April 6, 2010.
By Dennis Taylor
On a recent Friday, Maurizio Cutrignelli watched the front tables of Fuzia, one of his three Morgan Hill restaurants. His eyes darted among customers, instantly registering whether they were smiling, whether their water glasses were filled, or whether their faces showed delight when they took a bite from one of the eclectic menu items.
Frequently he would stop talking and in Spanish flag a server or busboy to tend to one of the customers.
"I enjoy the business, but most of all I like seeing people enjoy what they do," Cutrignelli said. "If I see that people are happy, it looks like I'm doing the right thing."
As Dr. Walter Newman - a longtime customer and self-acknowledged foodie - put it, Cutrignelli is a "maestro who conducts every aspect of his restaurant and his life with great genius." Newman met Cutrignelli (pronounced Coo-tree-nelli) at Giancarlo Cucumo's Casa Mia restaurant on Main Street in Morgan Hill in 1993, when Cutrignelli was busing tables at Casa Mia. As Newman tells it, Cucumo asked the doctor, dottore in Italian, to come have dinner and teach his friend Maurizio English.
"After dinner I ordered a hot latte," Newman recalled. "Well, Maurizio disappears - he went to the market to get some milk - and when he came back, he served me a cup of warm milk. In Italian, latte simply means milk. Since that day Maurizio and his wife Sara have called me Doctor Latte."
Anecdotes about Cutrignelli abound throughout the Morgan Hill community - all speaking to the warm, earnest nature of the Italian immigrant who is now an American citizen.
Cutrignelli said he fell in love with America during his first trip here from his hometown of Bari, Italy to help his friend Cucumo at Casa Mia.
"When I first got to Morgan Hill I was wondering where all the skyscrapers were," Cutrignelli laughed. "Growing up in Italy you think all of American is like New York."
After spending a few months at Casa Mia he returned to Italy, but came back to Morgan Hill a month later. Cutrignelli didn't know whether he would be able to stay in the States. He spent the next four years living without residency papers - an undocumented immigrant. He entered the "green-card" lottery in 1997 and by pure luck his number was selected. Now with the right to apply for citizenship, Cutrignelli began the serpentine world of the federal bureaucracy. More years rolled by while he studied voraciously for his citizenship exam, and in 2006 his dream came true as he swore the oath of allegiance to the United States.
"I had fallen in love with the country right away," he said with just enough Italian accent left to make his English charming.
It wasn't the only thing he fell in love with in America. In late 1999 Cutrignelli needed a server for Maurizio's, his first formal, sit-down restaurant in Morgan Hill. In walked Sara Torres and she was hired. Two years later they were married.
"I went for a job, and I knew I was going to marry him," Sara Cutrignelli recalled. "I just knew." Today, Maurizio and Sara are the proud parents of three children: Floriana is 7; Michele is 6, and Adriana is 3.
Learning the business
As every entrepreneur knows, or will learn, having a passion for a business and running one efficiently can be two different things. When Cutrignelli opened his first business in 1994, Piccolo's on Second Street, it was a success from the beginning.
"He made incredible gelato, and eggplant sandwiches with parmesan and tomatoes," Doctor Latte said. "There was a line every day."
Part of the reason there was a long line daily was Cutrignelli made each order as it came in. It was suggested he make the sandwiches ahead of time, but Cutrignelli would have none of that. The sandwiches and ingredients had to be the freshest possible.
The small size of Piccolo's was Cutrignelli's first instinctive business success, one Newman readily identified. "In my family we have a saying, 'keep it small, keep it all,'" Newman said. It was hard to do though, as Piccolo's began receiving accolades not just in Morgan Hill, but throughout Silicon Valley.
One of Piccolo's regular customers was Debbie Arvidson, who at the time worked at a travel agency in downtown Morgan Hill. When Cutrignelli opened Maurizio's. Debbie and her husband Wayne became instant customers and soon became friends with Maurizio and Sara. But Maurizio's was busy all the time and the young restaurateur was quickly running out of space.
As it happened, Wayne Arvidson was a seasoned global marketing and business development executive with nearly two decades of senior management experience. His clients were in the technology sector and ranged from startups to Fortune 500 firms. And among his specialties were business strategy, business development and marketing. Naturally Cutrignelli asked Arvidson for advice on securing a new location and expanding.
"Maurizio has two tremendous gifts," Arvidson said from his home near Boston. "One is passion and the other is his focus on people. He's like many entrepreneurs, in that he felt those two things could carry the day, but they don't necessarily translate into a viable business strategy."
What Arvidson would learn about Cutrignelli was that he was a quick study. The two began looking at the property that was the old Jack's Steakhouse. But in order to carry it off, Cutrignelli needed to present a business plan for a Small Business Administration loan, which is where Arvidson came into the picture.
Arvidson began harnessing Cutrignelli's energy and helping him understand the fundamentals of the business. The task was to get Cutrignelli moving beyond the meal-to-meal mentality to understand what consumers' buying habits were and understand the economics of making the restaurant work.
As any business owner will tell you, it's difficult to work through the maze of local ordinances, state laws and federal guidelines.
"At that time he had only been here a few years, and it was amazing how he grasped the conceptual issues," Arvidson said. "In one month he went from a chef to being very savvy about running the business side. The process is intimidating for people who grew up here."
But the two had fun. Cutrignelli was still learning English and Arvidson was learning Italian. The two would switch back and forth between English and Italian to ensure concepts were being understood correctly. "There were piles of paperwork, and I'm still amazed at how quickly he grasped everything."
Although Debbie and Wayne Arvidson now live just outside of Boston, the friendship has endured. The Arvidsons make special trips to the West Coast just to spend time with the Cutrignellis, and when Wayne is out in the valley for one of his consulting trips, it's the Cutrignellis he stays with. Cutrignelli has that effect on people.
It's about people
Before coming to America, Cutrignelli studied at the esteemed Instituto Professionale Alberghiero in Bari, a state culinary school for chefs. While all graduates are credentialed chefs, Cutrignelli focused on what you can think of as the front office - the business and hospitality side of the business. It's a natural fit for a man who gives off such a strong sense of warmth, excitement and optimism.
"It was the first time that I had to consider that it's not always what you are making, but the cost of what you are making," he said.
In restaurants, as in any business, the first impression is one of the most important keys to success. Cutrignelli makes sure he always starts conversations with his customers, and not just the new ones.
"The thing he focuses on, the underlying thing, is the experience the customer receives," Arvidson said. "Even old customers like us are never taken for granted. We are given the same enthusiasm as a new customer would receive."
Of course it never hurts that customer relations are more than textbook training, that it is part of the restaurant owner's personality.
"Maurizio was the kindest, sweetest, most considerate young man, and always a pleasure to be around," said Gerry O'Day, with whom Cutrignelli stayed with during those early days in Morgan Hill. "Some things never change. I am very proud of him."
But creating a comfortable atmosphere for customers also must extend to the kitchen," Cutrignelli believes. When he talks about his staff, he speaks with pride. He calls his current staff the best he's ever had. And in turn, the effort he makes and the respect he shows his staff is reciprocated. Perhaps because he himself is an immigrant, and worked for a while without papers, he has a deep empathy for his staff members who are immigrants. He helped one of his employees, Daniel Garcia, secure his green card.
"He's one of the guys I admire," Cutrignelli said. "I admire him because he just works, works, works. He deserves to be here."
Garcia has been in the U.S. for about a decade now and has known Cutrignelli for about half that time. Without Cutrignelli, Garcia said, he might have been back in Mexico by now.
"He's a very good person," Garcia said. "He's helped a lot of people find work. He's just a good person - and his wife, too. I didn't have anything until I started working with him."
Keeping customers happy and coming back, and ensuring his staff is respected and enthused, are key factors in his success. But having the natural ability to juggle so many interests simultaneously, while keeping one eye always on the customer, is what in the minds of many Morgan Hill residents is the overriding reason Cutrignelli has become an icon in the community. Of course he is quick to heap accolades on those around him.
"If everyone plays the right notes, the music just flows," Cutrignelli said.
After all, isn't that what a maestro does?
Dennis Taylor is a South Bay writer. You can reach him at scribe.taylor@gmail.com.
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