La Rocca’s Imports and Specialties in village of Oregon brings Italy to your kitchen

The owners of La Rocca’s Restaurant and Pizzeria, which takes up 5,000 square feet on Oregon’s Janesville Street, launched La Rocca’s Imports and Specialties in December.

The retail store, a cozy offshoot of the restaurant located right next door, is Vito and Cathy La Rocca’s way of sharing their Sicilian values with the community: Fresh food is nourishment for the soul, and enjoying a home-cooked meal with your family is an experience to be savored rather than rushed.

“There are people who eat to live, and people who live to eat,” Cathy said, adding that she and her husband are at the store every day along with six part-time employees, some of whom help out in the retail store. “Food is the core of life.”

If the shop’s products aren’t made in-house, La Rocca said they are bought directly from Italy or from a U.S. vendor that buys from the European country.

The business offers fresh take-and-bake options pulled directly from the pizzeria’s menu like meatballs, lasagna, penne pasta with marinara sauce, salads and cold cuts of various meats. It will soon provide shoppers with take-and-bake pizza kits with dough made in-house, La Rocca said.

La Rocca’s Imports and Specialties shelves and tables are also stocked with traditional Italian cuisine staples like various kinds of pasta, olive oils, cookies, gelato, cookware, dishware and espresso machines, as well as roasted peppers, eggplant, artichokes and black olives. The gelato is especially popular among customers, La Rocca said, adding that they’ve asked for it by the gallon despite it only being sold in small containers.

“We have eaten and tasted all the things that are in our Italian specialty store,” La Rocca said. “What better way is there for me to be selling an item? I can actually talk about the tasting experience. I can also give you ideas and advice on how to make that item.”

Prices for product range from a $3 bag of cookies to an $18 bottle of olive oil. La Rocca said the store doesn’t sell wine, a classic Italian beverage, because of local ordinances that limit alcohol sales.

“We are not a high-end store,” La Rocca said, adding that items come in smaller portions to keep prices affordable.

Business has been good since opening the shop, La Rocca said. The store’s advertising has mainly been through word of mouth. The pizzeria continues to do well, too.

Both Vito and Cathy trace their roots back to the town of Marsala, Sicily — a province of Italy. The town of Marsala is famous for its wine, food, beaches, majestic buildings and historic churches. It’s located on “the last part of the boot” of Italy, Cathy said.

“I grew up in the restaurant business,” Cathy said. The couple met in the U.S. and quickly discovered they had a joint passion for the art of cooking.

In the late 1970s, they began working in Italian restaurants in Rockford, Illinois, and did so until the early 1980s, La Rocca said. That’s when the La Roccas opened their first Italian restaurant in Stoughton, operating there until 1990 when Marsala called the family and their business back home for almost a decade.

“Both of Vito’s parents had moved back, and we had two little girls who did not know their grandparents,” La Rocca said.

But the La Roccas couldn’t be kept away from Wisconsin forever — upon moving back in 2002, the family opened a small pickup and delivery pizzeria in Brooklyn. A few years later, La Rocca’s restaurant would find itself on Madison’s Williamson Street until ultimately settling for the village of Oregon in 2012.

The village has the small-town atmosphere that La Rocca’s Pizzeria and the store can thrive on, La Rocca said.

“Being in Oregon has been a great opportunity for us,” she said. “The village is very welcoming.”