Piccolo, the market that a cod salad wrought

Piccolo Market, a specialty market and pizzeria in Moultonborough, specializes in home-made items and Italian speciality goods. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho

By ADAM DRAPCHO, LACONIA DAILY SUN

MOULTONBOROUGH — Bill Bennett, owner of Piccolo Market, located just over the line from Center Harbor, was born into an Italian family in Connecticut, and started his professional career in New York. It was a whirlwind romance, fueled by a dried cod salad, that brought him to central New Hampshire.

Bennett's family, on his mother's side, immigrated in the late 1940s from Savignano, a small hilltop village surrounded by farmland in the Campania region of Italy. They eventually settled down in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Bennett was born.

Though his father wasn't Italian, Bennett enjoyed the full Italian-American experience, surrounded by his extended family at home and making several trips to Savignano. He learned to cook at the elbows of residents in both continents, and after high school he enrolled in the Connecticut Culinary Institute.

With his degree in hand, he began what could have become the first chapter of a New York restaurateur's success story. He got an internship at La Provence, in South Norwalk, Connecticut, which was a favorite of the New York Times food critics, and he worked his way up to sous chef. He then moved to Italian restaurants in New York, but then, in 1998, while back in Bridgeport, he met Andrea, a resident of the Czech Republic who was in the country on a temporary work visit. He took her on a date to the Bronx Zoo, where he produced a picnic lunch that included Baccala, a salad made from dried, salted cod. She was impressed by the salad, and he told her that if she wanted to keep eating food like that, she'd have to stay with him.

"I think she married me because of that Baccala salad," he said, looking at a tray of the food in his display case.

Two months after their first date, they were married, and honeymooned in a rustic cabin in a remote part of Maine. There, intoxicated with young love, the eschewed city living and sought to make a life for themselves in the woods. Searching for a place with enough economic activity to sustain themselves, they landed in North Conway in 2000, where there were many restaurants but nowhere that Bennett could see himself working. So, they opened Maestro's, a small deli and café in a side street that was little more than an alley.

"We decided to give it a shot," he said, recalling that they signed a short lease to give themselves an easy escape if necessary. "We thought, after a year we'll be out of here."

Maestro's, with authentic Italian food and goods, was so unlike anything else in the area that they didn't know if they would get any customers. In fact, their uniqueness brought customers again and again, to the point where, in 2009, they moved into a larger location so that they could serve more people. Success continued, but Bennett's satisfaction waned. A larger space carried a larger overhead, and he found he was working harder just to cover expenses, without making much more profit.

Maestro's closed in late 2014, and in December of that year Bennett opened Piccolo, in a strip mall on Route 25, positioned between a laundromat and Dunkin' Donuts franchise.

"We're kind of going back to what we did. We knew we did it right," he said. "So far, business is thriving."

In Moultonborough, he's found that the local clientele is even hungrier for his offerings than in the Mount Washington Valley. In fact, business ramped up so quickly that he had to shelve some of his ambitions.

"My first idea when I opened up here was to do more of a salumaria," he said, referring to shop that would sell salami, prosciutto and other cured meats that he intended to produce in-house – he even has the equipment to do it. He just doesn't have the time, because he's so busy with pizza and prepared foods.

"I never really got to that point because I got so overwhelmed with everything else," he said. During the summer, as much as 70 percent of his business is pizzas, mostly called in and carried out. On most nights, orders will pile up until there's an hour wait for customers – he specializes in thin-crust, 20-inch pizzas, and only so many can fit in a pizza oven at a given time.

It's not just the size of the pizzas that set them apart, though. Bennett makes the dough from scratch, and the sauce is house-made. The cheese blend includes house-made mozzarella, and the order includes sausage, it's Bennett's sausage recipe, and was made either by him or by his and Andrea's oldest son, René. Their 14 year-old son, Marcel, also helps in the kitchen. They also have an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old.

The deli case houses Italian specialty goods, such as cheeses and cured meats, several different kinds of olives, and prepared foods that rotate daily based on Bennett's inspirations. On Wednesday, the case included a fennel salad and a tray of the Baccala that set his and Andrea's story in motion. On other days, he'll make lasagna, veal scallopini, or osso bucco. Soon, he'll start adding a cool-weather favorite, cabbage leaves stuffed with risotto, sausage and vegetables.

"They sell like crazy," he said.

Next to the homemade items are goods that he brings back from New York City about once each month: Italian canned tomatoes, olive oils, canned seafood, dried pastas. But, if Bennett can make something himself, the odds are that he does. Loaves of bread are baked a few times each day, the pickled vegetables are his, and he has started smoking his own pastrami, fashioned after his favorite Jewish deli in New York.

He could simply order a pretty good pastrami, and it might make better business sense to do so, he acknowledged. But the reason he started Piccolo is the same reason he brought home-made Baccala to the Bronx Zoo nearly two decades ago: to share his passion for food.

"I think we would profit a lot more if I didn't have so much I didn't have so much passion for it," he said. "But if I wasn't going by my passion, I would just open up a Subway, right?"

Bill Bennett owns Piccolo Market, located at 70 Whittier Highway in Moultonborough. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)