![]() ![]() “I was ready for retirement, but retirement isn’t for everybody, I guess,” he said. ![]() And while he plans to hire 10 mostly part-time employees, he will take the helm of the kitchen himself. ![]() Perché No will initially focus on its daily lunch and happy hours, offering dinner service only Thursdays through Saturdays until they get the feel for the business flow. And while he plans to serve flatbreads on the happy hour menu, pizza is not in the plans. That means more cream-based sauces than red sauce on his mix of pasta and meat and seafood dishes. Perché No’s menu will draw from Girardi’s northern Italian roots as well as his mother’s French influence. On the sidewalk patio, Girardi will have another four tables to accommodate a dozen diners. The dining room is divided into two rooms and will have a total of 14 mahogany tables with cushioned wooden chairs to encourage diners to stick around during the daily happy hours. He also had to get all new kitchen equipment. Six weeks ago, Girardi inked a lease and set about sprucing up the space including work on the flooring and adding stainless steel to the countertops to give it a rustic modern look. It already had Italian in its bones for 22 years, it was home to the Italian restaurant Caffé Milano - rechristened La Fufi Caffé Milano by its most recent owners - which was done in by the pandemic and closed last December. In June, they learned that the 1,500-square-foot space near the Fox Tucson Theatre was available. In January, they came back, bought a house and started looking for restaurant locations. They also learned that aside from our monsoons in the summertime, Tucson doesn’t get natural disasters. “We drove by Tucson and we liked it.”īack in Washington, they did some research and discovered that Tucson was a foodies paradise. “We kind of fell in love with the city,” said Girardi, who was originally from France, the son of an Italian father and French mother. The restaurant is expected to open by early September. Another four tables will be on the sidewalk patio. A total of 14 tables will occupy two dining rooms. The Girardis are busy sprucing up the space. It was on that drive home, through the South and down into Texas and New Mexico and into Southern Arizona, that they passed through Tucson. Girardi and his wife, Kristine, docked in Florida and decided to head back to Edmonds to catch up with their two older daughters who attend college in Washington. Living on a boat for eight months, that will do it to you,” Girardi said, his Italian accent still thick after decades of living in the United States. Not much you can do in the pristine tropics when everything is closed. Thomas, like the rest of the world, went on lockdown. ![]() Virgin Islands.Īnd then the pandemic hit and St. Perché No is Italian for “why not?” which pretty much sums up Girardi’s philosophy with this second chapter of his restaurant life.īack in 2019, Girardi sold his Italian restaurant Giradi’s Osteria in Edmonds, Washington, and set out to retire on a boat in St. “I have a burst of youth coming to me so I need to do this,” said the 56-year-old father of three, including a 14-year-old who will be starting high school in Tucson in the coming weeks. If all goes as planned with the permits, Girardi will open Perché No in the former Caffé Milano spot at 46 W. ![]()
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