Prescott Market welcomes Fatto a Mano

"Misinformation sure is easy to come by these days. A waiter once told me that it was acceptable to pronounce bruschetta with a soft "sh" sound. At the time, I didn't know the meaning of the word gullible. Fatto a Mano's owner Elena Fabbri quickly disabused me of this urban culinary myth. The Tuscan-born chef emphatically enunciated the crunchy Italian appetizer's name with a hard "k" sound, as in Porchetta Toscana, the catering business she and her husband Gustavo Mutul also run."

"In her newly opened Prescott Market kitchen, Fabbri already moves about the space as if she were at home. When she serves a dish of pasta to a customer, she asks if they'd like even more parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, before adding, "Would you like some bread?" Hospitality, the art of being hospitable, is second nature to her. "I really like to take care of people. I really like to feed people. That's what I've always done," she said."

"Fabbri was born into a family that owned restaurants. "I wanted to go to culinary school and my parents said, 'Absolutely not,'" the chef told me. She studied languages instead. But when she arrived in the Bay Area in 1999, after a stint on the East Coast, Fabbri found work at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store in North Beach, Splendido in the Embarcadero and at Giovanni Perticone's Trattoria Pinocchio."

Elena Fabbri is a Tuscan-born chef who emphasizes authentic Italian pronunciation and hands-on hospitality, regularly offering extra parmesan and bread to customers. She was born into a family that owned restaurants and initially studied languages after her parents discouraged culinary school. After arriving in the Bay Area in 1999, she worked at several notable local eateries. In 2017 she and her husband Gustavo Mutul launched Porchetta Toscana as a farmers' market pop-up serving lasagne and focaccia sandwiches, which became a full-time business. During the pandemic they secured a government contract to prepare meals for homebound elderly. They later opened the dine-in restaurant La Gastronomia in Fairfax.

Read at East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda