Mano Bella
Updated: Apr 1
My name is Raffaele Patrizi. I am the chef‑owner of Mano Bella Artisan Food. We are located in Charlotte, North Carolina. My style of cuisine is classic Italian cuisine.
I moved to the States back in 2014. I was born and raised in Rome, Italy, and I have a very big and deep approach to real Italian cuisine. You can eat in my now three restaurants that I own in Charlotte. My wife is the operator, creator, and pretty much designer of everything like that. But I say, whatever you can eat in my restaurant—if you get a ticket right now and go to Italy—you will eat pretty much the same things.
With all respect, I don’t do spaghetti and meatballs. I don’t do Alfredo sauce. Everybody loves it, but it’s not something that you will find if you go to Italy. I think that inspires much of my culinary work. Of course, everybody says Italian, grandma, granny, etc., etc., etc. Yes, for me, the inspiration has always been both of my grandmas. They are not with us anymore—God bless them—but they were a big part of my culinary growth.
Both of my grandmas were born around the 1930s, a very poor time in Italy. They learned how to cook for their families from nothing. Everything was made from scratch. Everything they had available, they used. They transmitted the love of each individual ingredient to me and taught me the way I cook. Everything is from scratch. For example—take a grain—you make flour from the grain. From the rest of the grain, you roast it and make some decoration or whatever.
The thing that brings me back, that both my grandmas were amazing at, was polenta with tomato sauce. Braised meat—the meat is put in the tomato sauce for five, six hours—and the sauce… oh my god.
At my restaurant, the process to make our tomato basil sauce is six or seven hours. Put the olive oil in first, then the garlic, let it roast, add the onions, cook down the onions, etc., etc., etc. Then I add the tomato sauce and let it simmer for six hours. So when you eat, you don’t taste just the tomato. Step by step, it becomes a bomb of flavor in your mouth. That is the kind of cuisine my grandmas taught me, and it’s the kind of cuisine we make in my restaurant.
Last year, we made 200,000 pounds of fresh pasta, and we sell to 35 different restaurants in the Carolinas, plus my restaurants.
For my specialty item, I’m bringing a house‑made tagliatelle with a wild boar ragù. I got the recipe from both of my grandmas. My materal grandma is from an area called Latina — a little bit below Rome, between Rome and Naples. My paternal grandma is from a little farther north, in an area named Umbria.
Down in Latina, they make this classic style: double‑zero flour, eggs, let the dough rest, make the pasta by hand, stretch the pasta by hand. Up north in Umbria, where my dad’s family is from, they are big on hunting meat—of course, wild boar. So I took the best of the culinary things my grandmas taught me and blended them together: tagliatelle from Latina and wild boar ragù from Umbria. I mix both traditions, and I hope you enjoy.
I started my company with my wife doing the Farmers Market back in 2021. From there, we opened the Market at 7th Street location in 2022. We then opened a SouthPark location, and in 2024, after five months, we renewed the store while moving into a bigger space at the Market at 7th Street. So we opened the Market at 7th Street location for the second time—renewed, bigger space—because business is growing like crazy.
Just last Monday, we acquired a restaurant named Capiche Real Italian Kitchen, and we opened this third restaurant that has two huge, gorgeous wood‑fire pizza ovens. We are running this third restaurant now, and we are going to rebrand in about three to four months with a new menu, new name, and a couple of other new things.
As soon as you walk into the Market at 7th Street, we are the first stall on the right. It’s a very big space. The first thing that will catch your eye is the biggest pasta machine in all of North Carolina. It makes 500 pounds of pasta per hour. My wife and I , two years ago, received international lessons, and we imported it here to the States. We have a good‑sized line, so everything is pretty much an open kitchen. My team is there every day, welcoming guests. Every day we make fresh pasta. Tuesday and Thursday we make fresh ravioli, everything in front of people’s eyes.
We also have a wheel of cheese—high‑quality, personally imported from Italy. Guests can order pasta alla ruota (ruota means wheel). My team cooks the fresh pasta, tosses it in the wheel of cheese, and plates it. It’s kind of like an Alfredo sauce on steroids because it’s a 24–36‑month Parmesan cheese, DOP. I personally shook the hand of the artisan who made the whole wheel.
We are a little experience of artisans making things every day. You walk in and see us making fresh pasta, tossing the pasta we just made in the boiler, sautéing it, and serving it to you.
Of course, the thing that makes my grandma’s recipe become more mine is that I need to change the recipe. Grandma was making tagliatelle for 20 people. I make tagliatelle for about five to 10,000 people per year. I changed the recipe a little bit because she used very basic ingredients—just egg and flour. The way I make it now is a little bit more, I wouldn’t say industrial, but it’s for the general public.
When I make tagliatelle, I use semolina pasta. Semolina is a harder winter wheat that is a little more crunchy at the back. You need to use a little less liquid because it’s ground thicker and less moist. It has a longer shelf life and a better bite. So I adjusted my recipe for the public and for what we do, but in the end, it’s still my grandma’s recipe.
I have a one‑year‑old baby girl. As soon as she can start to move a little more, pasta is going to be the first thing I teach her. It’s very important to me that she keeps this tradition. I believe that tradition and knowing where you come from is very important.
Before she passed, my grandma’s dream was to meet my baby girl. I live in the States, and all my family is in Italy. The only way she saw my baby was via WhatsApp. So for me, teaching this to my baby is a way for my grandma to have the chance to be with her for the rest of her life, even if they never met.
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