class - Regis College

Martone
is to lunchmeats
what Bernini
was to marble .
22
REGIS TODAY
restaurant in honor of her
brother, who as a child charged
around the house singing Fig-ahroh,
Figaro, Figaro. “I wanted a
place where people could escape
from their computers, listen to
a little Sinatra, a little reggae,
and the menu would always be
different,” she says. “I wanted
people to be inspired, to take a
real mental break.”
The location, downstairs from
an English-as-a-second-language
school along an alley-like leg of
Beach Street between Chinatown
proper and South Station, beckoned
precisely because of its
stealth, says Rosie, who was
intent on opening something
up in Boston.
“I fell in love with it, a hidden
jewel in an alley,” that seemed
destined to become, if it succeeded
at all, a cult place, “a place you
says Rosie. Her cult following was
Bulger wrap—buffalo chicken
tenders, crumbled bacon, shredded
cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce,
and buttermilk ranch dressing—
to a customer who came up from
North Carolina to Figaro’s especially
to sample the sandwich in
the wake of the notorious Southie
mobster’s arrest in June of 2011.
“I grab my inspiration from
everything—travels, experiences,
my brother’s eastern European
wife, Olga, who makes a mean
borscht,” says Martone. After graduating
with a degree in English,
to launch a career in stand-up
comedy. It proved exhausting.
She grew weary of always having
to be funny. “If you don’t feel like
being funny one night that’s not an
option,” says Martone, who got her
to Scottsdale, Arizona, where she
helped conjure menus and sandwich
ideas for a place called The
Desert Grind, the inspiration
for Figaro’s.
“I really found my niche,” says
Martone, who discovered she was
more eager to get to her $5-anhour
food job than to do stand-up.
It turned out that her real calling
was, like the scent of garlic in the
Martone household, always right
under her nose. “I was rolling
meatballs since I was 5. I started
curing meats with my dad when
I was 15. I was always making
sausages.” Martone’s most powerful
childhood memories are of a
family farm in Italy where they
slaughtered pigs. “They didn’t lie
to you and say the pig was going
on vacation,” recalls Martone, who
returns to Italy as often as pos-
and Spanish.
Though it could be said that
Martone is to lunchmeats what
Bernini was to marble, even those
lacking her evident talents have
a thing about claiming sandwich
rights. So Martone decided to
indulge her customers with an
annual sandwich competition,
propelled by Facebook to a level
“Everyone thinks they have a
million dollar sandwich,” says
Martone, who along with her
the process whereby customers
having one’s sandwich become
For two weeks customers “vote”
by buying one of the competing
sandwiches made by Rosie from
recipes submitted by hopeful customers
in a process that reaches a
so many bizarre entries,” says
Martone, who recalls sandwiches
foie gras, and sea urchins. “Some
guy put in a sardine, fried onion,
sliced cucumber, avocados, and
mustard,” she says. She “had to
break it to him gently” that the
sandwich was just…weird. The
was a contest winner that remains
a crowd favorite.
p
regulars, Martone has always
been guided by instinct and
heart. “I think I’m viewed as the
mother of the restaurant, so when
I’m not there things run very
smoothly but it doesn’t have the
Rosie touch,” she says. “I know
who’s gluten-free, who doesn’t
like tomatoes, who likes a little
versus a ton of mayonnaise,” says
Martone, who plans to divide her
time between the two restaurants
by spending two days in Boston,
be open weekends. “Our plan is to
implement a really fun brunch,”
great brunch?”
Sandwiches may not get credit
for being a particularly haute
but at Le Cordon Bleu Martone
dazzled her mentors with her creativity
and fearlessness. “I came
up with some cockamamie things
and Cordon Bleu inspired me to
aim further,” says Martone. The
idea to enter cooking school eight