Mezza Luna survives with similar menu, far more takeout

When you walk into Mezza Luna Cafe in Buzzards Bay, you come across a wall of snapshots and handwritten notes — crowded collectively and sometimes overlapping —showing households marking occasions from christenings to weddings to bereavements.

Proprietor E. J. Cubellis II (Emilio John, but several know that for the reason that he has constantly been E.J.) took in excess of the company in 1993 at age 21 from his father, E.J. Cubellis, also an Emilio but known as Johnny. Johnny took above the small business from his mother, Speranza Cubellis, who began Mezza Luna in 1937 out of the family members household.

The generations of household entrepreneurs and the wall of patrons’ photos, as very well as the hearty greetings of “E.J., how are you E.J.?” when he walks by Mezza Luna’s five eating areas all converse to why Cubellis, 48, reopened the restaurant right after having a four-month split from March 29 to July 27, 2020.

“After 83 decades, I could not near this area. My father and my grandmother labored far too hard. And I have got a 15-12 months-old daughter researching culinary arts at the tech school who would like to do the job in this article. How could I toss all that away?”

Cubellis shut early in the pandemic, partly due to the fact during the initial week of condition-requested takeout only, Cubellis states, Mezza Luna took in $10,000 worth of orders and paid out $8,000 in salaries and charges for the plastic takeout containers.

“I’m not a takeout cafe. I’m a white-linen tablecloth area. It seemed like each individual working day, I was making an attempt to rewrite my company prepare,” Cubellis says. “My kitchen area however requires a village to run. It’s not like two persons can appear in and operate this 3,000-square-foot kitchen area.”

“This is my delight and joy,” he says, stepping into the stainless-steel kitchen with a 50 %-dozen stations for various responsibilities. On a Monday afternoon, the kitchen area is silent besides for the heavenly smell wafting from the 10 loaves of Italian bread baked every working day.

Early in the pandemic, Cubellis and his employees — quite a few longtime staff who worked with his father — started hunting for strategies to satisfy condition polices and to streamline operations.

Brothers Jeremy and Derek Griffith, manning the kitchen area for 28 yrs and now government chefs, went more than the menu with an eye towards slicing back again. But, Cubellis claims, there is a buying program that fits with the menu every item bought is made use of in quite a few dishes so it does not make sense to slice any just one dish. And prospects complain, he states, if they just cannot get a dish they’ve requested ahead of.

So, the cooks and Cubellis made a decision to continue to keep all the things but limit specials that demanded unique getting. Transforming the menu also fees dollars, he factors out, for the reason that it signifies shelling out someone to update the restaurant’s web-site and social media.

So diners will find the authentic 50 entrees, furthermore 4 soups, 6 salads and dessert. There is a area on pasta specialties — which include handmade lasagna ($20), eggplant parmigiana ($20), homemade ravioli in cheese or spinach ($19) and a number of varieties of fettuccini alfredo and fruite de mare ($35) with contemporary scallops, haddock, shrimp, calamari, littlenecks and mussels. There are also sections for hen, beef, pork and fish.

“The chefs make almost everything accurately like my father did, which is particularly the place,” Cubellis suggests.

That suggests ingesting at Mezza Luna feels rather a great deal as normal, besides only 60 of the 240 seats are occupied at any a person time. There are 20 additional seats on the patio but there are no heaters so that place is not getting applied in winter season. Cubellis says he plans to reopen the patio in warmer weather conditions but still will not use the parking large amount for outside dining because the terrain is on a slope and there is not a large amount of on-street parking.

Rather of using paper packets of salt and pepper, or envelopes of grated cheese, at tables, Cubellis invested in 500 smaller glass salt-and-pepper shakers and 250 cheese shakers — more than enough for two to three seatings per night time. At the close of the night time, he suggests, all the glassware is sanitized. Laminated menus are cleaned immediately after each use.

Cubellis paid out $14,000 to set up glass, instead of plexiglass, dividers involving booths in the lounge. He also experienced a wall of glass panels installed to enclose the lounge from tables in the adjacent eating space. The additions match the dark wooden set up when Mezza Luna was rebuilt following a devastating fire in 2007.

A single of the pandemic’s number of silver linings that Cubellis has witnessed is a significant raise in takeout, from 5 to 7% of general small business to 30 to 40%.

“When we had to swap to extra takeout, I begged our fellas to not forget everything — never forget about the cheese, really do not forget the bread,” he claims, noting only one or two orders were being missing a little something.

Following month, Cubellis claims, there are options to offer family foods at $99 that feed 4 to six people today with soup or salad, bread and one particular of many entrees, including Mezza Luna’s most well-liked: chicken parmesan. The household meal would be $120 to $150 if ordered a la carte.

“Italian meals carries properly and reheats perfectly,” he suggests, and he has grown more comfortable with the takeout option as customers selected it additional normally.

Cubellis says some people today are anxious about feeding on in a cafe, even although Mezza Luna is expansive and diners have numerous open up spaces from which to select.

The cutback in dining-in has intended servers have missing — and continue on to eliminate — some several hours and suggestions, Cubellis suggests. But among unemployment with previous spring’s person federal bonus of $600, and $300,000 in federal payroll security cash been given by Mezza Luna, he claims, the staff was compensated all through the four-month shutdown.

Now, pretty much all 50 are back again, apart from for two or a few longtime workforce who had been not relaxed functioning at all for the duration of COVID-19. “They will have their employment when they are comfy coming back,” Cubellis says.

“Our staff begged me to preserve the position open up and that’s what I plan to do.”

Mezza Luna Restaurant

253 Principal St., Buzzards Bay

508-759-4667, mezzalunarestaurant.com

Open daily, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays by Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays

Mezza Luna survives with similar menu, far more takeout

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