Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Pedrazzini
Hi Sara, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
We move to San Diego from Italy 10 years ago, we came to visit my brother that was living here and after a month he offered to sell us the restaurant (he lives in Spain now) and with a close to zero background on restaurant business my husband and I decided to accept this challenge and move to San Diego. I studied Math and my husband used to be a builder. We moved here in 2015 to open the restaurant, we locked our apartment in Italy and started this new adventure. Oltre Mare is our little gem, we worked with all our hearts to make it shine and I feel like we did it, we slowly became a fixed point in the community with a lot of regular customers that kept coming to dine with us through the years
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We did not have a restaurant business background, to me the most difficult thing was to get used to work night shifts, when we moved here our two boys were 4 and 7 and it was really hard to adjust to a new culture and new life with no family support
As you know, we’re big fans of Erbisti Inc. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We came to the US to open a restaurant 10 years ago and we decided to be a little different from the competition, so in our menu there are some of the known Italian dishes, but mostly are just what we do like to eat and what my husband likes to cook, we have a small menu that did not change much through the years because our customers really like our dishes, we are known for our wild boar meat sauce, our steamed mussels (that are not even in the menu) , out porcini mushrooms pasta. Our homemade pasta is really loves, so much that 5 years ago we decided to move in that direction and we opened a second place called Pastiamo where we sell only fresh pasta and some sauces (different from the ones we serve at the restaurant), we wanted it to be a nice change from the usual fast food you can find everywhere, there in 10 minutes you can enjoy a wonderful plate of hot homemade pasta with our choice of homemade sauces (that we make at the restaurant). We started really small in both the locations, we did not advertise much but the word of mouth helped us to spread the word and we are well known after 10 years.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Just do your best, if you do something you really believe in and you do it with all your heart even if it will not go exactly as you wish you won’t have regrets.
Pricing:
- Wild Boar Bolognese pasta $27
- Burrata $15
- Pizzas from $17 to $25
Contact Info:
- Website: https://oltremaresd.com
- Instagram: oltremaresd
- Other: https://pastiamosd.com
