Catrina Bremer knows quite a bit about the local restaurant industry, and now she’s ready to apply it with her family recipes in a new restaurant.
This week Bremer is planning a soft-opening for Nona Rosa’s Ristorante & Pizzeria at 113 E. Magnolia St., next to The Newstand, in time for the Euro Cup soccer tournament, which the restaurant will have on television. Nona Rosa’s will start off with the deli and bar, opening the kitchen for lunch and dinner later this month.
Bremer plans to use her mother’s recipes for a variety of food, including pizza by the slice, sandwiches, baked pasta dishes, bread, cookies and cannoli. She plans a deli-restaurant format, catering to those who need to grab a quick bite to go or have a sit-down lunch or dinner.
She started working in the restaurant industry at age 15. During the next 30 years she worked at or managed a variety of restaurants, most recently Giuseppe’s Italian Restaurant. Now she wants a chance to own her own place.
“I didn’t want to get to the point where I didn’t take the risk and then always wonder if I could have made it,” Bremer said. “This is truly what I want to do, and this is a great chance to work with my family. At 45, I think it’s my time to give it a whirl.”
Bremer said the Sicilian culture and language is a little different from Italian (nona, for example, means grandma in the Sicilian language; in Italian it’s nonna) and she plans to bring that out with her restaurant.
“Throughout history Sicily was conquered by practically everyone, so there have been a lot of different cultural influences,” Bremer said. “It has also been a poorer region of Italy through the years, so they had to find ways to make basic foods taste great.”
She plans to have the food priced at about $10 for lunch and in the $15 range for dinner.
Her son, Josh Bremer, and Ian Westbrook will be the chefs, trained by Nona Rosa — Bremer’s mother.
The deli will be open seven days a week. When the kitchen is ready, table service for lunch will be Tuesday through Friday, while dinner service will be Tuesday through Saturday. For more information about the restaurant, call 733-8100.
OTHER TIDBITS
The Val-U Inn Motel at 805 Lakeway Drive is now the GuestHouse Inn, owned by GuestHouse International. Guesthouse has more than 65 hotel facilities across the country, including 10 in Washington state. The Bellingham hotel has 81 rooms and went through a major renovation two years ago. … Construction has started on a new Wells Fargo branch that will be part of the Ferndale Station retail center being developed at 1855 Main St., near the Ferndale Haggen grocery store. The 3,500-square-foot branch is expected to open at the end of the year and will offer a variety of financial services, including consumer and business banking, mortgages and investment. It will have two drive-up teller lanes, a conference room and ATM. The current Wells Fargo branch at 5706 Fourth Ave. will remain open until the new branch is ready. To date, no other tenants for the retail center have been officially announced.
Retail Tip Sheet runs each Monday. Reach Dave Gallagher at 715-2269 or dave.gallagher@bellinghamherald.com.