Cooking is in Chi-Cha Russo’s 100% Italian blood. Her four grandparents came from Italy, three of them from the same tiny island, Isola delle Femmine, off the north coast of Sicily. All of her father’s eight brothers and sisters have restaurants in the Santa Clara Valley, including the oldest family-owned restaurant in the area, Vesuvio’s.
Chi-Cha is named after her Nana Chi-Cha, which is a nickname for Francesca. The way it works in the old country is that the first son is named after the husband’s father, the first daughter after the husband’s mother, the second son after wife’s father, and the second daughter after wife’s mother. “I have five cousins who have names taken from Francesca.”
Her grandmother would make ravioli and pizza for the entire family, which at a typical holiday gathering would be at least 40 people. Chi-Cha got started in the kitchen at a young age. Raised around so many cooks, the food business was a natural, but she didn’t cook professionally until she moved to Santa Cruz in 1985 as a single mother.
“I was going to have a restaurant or a deli, but then I discovered that Santa Cruz grocery stores would buy from local vendors. This was very unusual then. It meant that people making small production specialty foods in Santa Cruz had a good local market for their products.”
Chi-Cha found a commercial kitchen to rent and started really small just making lasagna. It sold very well so she added eggplant parmigiana. Three years later she added pesto sauces to her product line. Making friends in the food business, she shared her space with other specialty food makers.
Russo’s pesto sauces include Original Basil Pesto, Sundried Tomato Pesto, Artichoke Pesto, and Reduced Fat Pesto (46% less fat than the original recipe), which are found in the refrigerated section with the fresh pasta.
The newest layered tortas -- Creamy Gorgonzola Torta with Figs and Creamy Goat Cheese Torta with Apricots -- join the original Three-Layer Pesto Torta. The layered tortas are sold in the grocery store cheese department. |
