Business Profiles
Tre Ragazze offers good food, good friends and good times
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Debbie and Jamie Morse opened York's newest restaurant, Tre Ragazze, in the Meadowbrook Plaza on July 3. The quaint 1,000-square-foot facility is serving breakfast and lunch with an emphasis on low prices and homemade Italian fare.
Photo by Virginia L. Woodwell
YORK - Tre Ragazze!
If you don't know the language, you might think the words a spirited call to arms. But "tre ragazze" means, simply, "three girls" in Italian - and now it's also the name of York's newest eating place, the Tre Ragazze Café.
The "three girls," founder and owner Debbie Morse explained, are herself and her two daughters, Hailey, 10, and Olivia, 6 - though Jamie Morse, Debbie's husband and the girls' father, has been an active and supportive co-player in the operation since it opened on July 3.
Tucked into a corner of Meadowbrook Plaza, on the far right as you drive in, Tre Ragazze is serving breakfast and lunch six days a week, it's closed on Sundays, and specializing in basic Italian food served at reasonable prices and bought either to-go or to be consumed on site in a cozy, unpretentious, come-as-you-are atmosphere.
The Morses are aiming at a local clientele primarily, and they plan on staying open year-round.
Tre Ragazze's site was previously a shop selling RV supplies, and the Morses had to equip and completely redecorate it.
Now the tile floors are light in color, the walls are deep-red or golden yellow, and there are framed prints on the walls designed to contribute to what Debbie called a Tuscan color scheme.
The café atmosphere is reinforced by half-curtains at the front windows, tiny tables seating two with glass-covered table-cloths - in season, there are also two little iron tables with chairs outside - a big black chalkboard, and a long faux-antique sign hung high up that reads, "Good Food…Good Friends…Good Times."
The check-out counter is a slab of polyurethane-clad concrete that looks like granite, and behind and above it, on a higher counter concealing the food preparation area, big letters in silhouette spell "CUCINA" - Italian for "kitchen."
The little shop's seating capacity is 15.
Tre Ragazze's cucina output ranges from soups and chowders to 13 different kinds of subs, with all but the chicken kabob offered in six- or 12-inch sizes; three kinds of salads; four kinds of pasta; three kinds of paninis and calzones, billed as "LARGE!" with "enough to share" and "homemade," with varieties changing daily. The calzones also come with "pasta sauce to dip."
She aims to keep prices below $8, Debbie said, with the result that the highest-ticket items on the menu are the calzones, the chicken kabob and one of the pastas, each pegged at $7.95.
Breakfast fare at Tre Ragazze ranges from fruit cup to muffins, which Debbie makes, bagels that come fresh each day, along with the sub rolls, from two Boston bakeries, and sandwiches that can include ham, egg and cheese.
And of course, there are espressos, cappuccinos and lattes.
Friendly, outgoing, energetic and apparently industrious, neither Debbie, who's 37, nor Jamie, who's 41, appears phased by the fact that they've not run a restaurant before.
Debbie, however, said that she'd worked in many restaurants in her teens and twenties, including two major Italian ones in Middleton, Mass.
And she's got a personal jump on the Italian connection in a father, John H. Ventresca, Sr., whose family originated in Naples.
Debbie also hinted at some estimable business experience in reporting that she had worked as a real estate appraiser, and that she and Jamie had bought and sold real-estate for profit prior to moving to York in 2003.
"I always had it in the back of my mind to do something like this," she stressed.
For his part, Jamie is a firefighter who served for four years in the Air Force prior to working as a firefighter in civilian capacity at air bases in Weymouth and Hanscom, Mass., and at Little Rock, Ark.
Since April 2003, he's worked at Logan Airport in Boston, commuting there for two 24-hour stints each week.
The two have known each other since they met on a family camping venture in Raymond, N.H., when they were teenagers.
Jamie came originally from Danvers, Mass., and Debbie, from Peabody, and they were living not very far away, in Hamilton, Mass., when they discovered York after a weekend getaway at York's Tanglewood Inn bed and breakfast.
Thus far, they said with enthusiasm, Tre Ragazze's business has been "terrific."
Next on the agenda is hiring a replacement for Jamie, their first staffer, finding a wholesale provider of fresh Italian pastry and, come fall, providing free lunch deliveries.
After Labor Day, they'll also be closing on Saturdays as well as Sundays, to get a little breathing time. Sundays are now spent scouting supplies, Debbie said, but come winter, they're already envisioning winter fare: roasts, stuffing and vegetables - all for still under $8.
"I want to publicly thank all the people at Meadowbrook who've been our patrons," Debbie said. "We've had a lot of business from the plaza, which has been fabulous."
Altogether, she said, "We're very happy."
Tre Ragazze is now open from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, or to phone in an order, call 363-0800 or send a fax to 363-0855.
