Saucy Tomato taps owner’s Italian roots
After 35 years in the restaurant business in Southern California, Joe Rappa figured he was due for a change.
After he and his wife, Jean, moved to Las Vegas in 1996, Rappa found a job at The Mirage — until he was laid off after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Then he sold cars, until the car business got bad.
"I didn’t want to do it," he says of his return to restaurateur status, "but I couldn’t find nothing decent."
So the native of Sicily returned to what he has known since his Chicago boyhood: food. Italian food.
"I would watch my mom cook," he remembers, also recalling the observations he made at his brother’s Chicago restaurant, which served a full array of Italian cuisine.
That lifetime of lessons has found its way to Rappa’s latest restaurant, the Saucy Tomato.
"I was looking for a turn-key operation," Rappa says.
And he found one in the Saucy Tomato, in the Paradise Marketplace at Flamingo and Sandhill roads.
Taking over from the previous owners last September, Rappa kept the decor, including a stone counter with swivel stools for a dozen diners and booths for about 50 more. He then added a few more pictures to fill the warm golden walls.
Rappa saved the real remodeling for the menu, which now reflects his Italian roots — and his Chicago hometown.
That means Chicago-style pizza and Chicago-style beef sandwiches, along with Italian specialties, from calamari to cannoli.
When it comes to pizza, "any kind of crust you like or want, we make," Rappa says. But, as all true Chicagoans know, real pizza is deep-dish pizza, cut in squares — and not thin, foldable slices.
"We had a guy from New York who came in and said, ‘I like the pizza where I can fold it in half, with the grease dripping down my arm,’ " Rappa says, shuddering at the memory.
And while the Saucy Tomato will slice its pizzas in pie-shaped pieces if customers so request, they’re strictly squares by nature — at least when it comes to how they shape their pizza.
"We have a habit of squares," he says. "It’s a habit of 50 years."
The Saucy Tomato, 3870 E. Flamingo Road, is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and from 1 to 9:30 p.m. Sundays.
Appetizers: bruschetta, $5.99; fried calamari, $7.99
Salads: caprese salad, $7.49, antipasti salad, $9.99
Sandwiches: meatball parmigiana, $7.35, Chicago Italian beef, $7.99
Entrees: lasagna, $8.99 a la carte, $11.99 dinner; chicken marsala, $12.99 a la carte, $15.99 dinner; eggplant rollatine, $12.99 a la carte, $15.99 dinner
Pizza: thin or medium crust, $8.99-$14.45; pan pizza, $9.99-$15.99 (toppings $1-$1.75); Saucy’s Special (sausage, pepperoni, mushroom, pepper, onion), $12.99 for 12-inch, $15.99 for 14-inch, $18.99 for 16-inch
Information: 644-4000
