Erie’s Serafini family members making food made from original recipes
The Serafini Family sold the West 12th Street restaurant many years ago, but there is still demand for sauce, meatballs and more made under that name.
The Serafini family in Erie is working to keep their family recipes alive by selling food online.The family is fulfilling between 50 and 100 orders per week, but they are not advertising in order to keep up with demand.While they are receiving requests to open a restaurant, Amanda Serafini says they are not ready to discuss that yet.
Erie’s Serafini family, led by Amanda Serafini and her husband, Opie Hughes, full-time Realtor and mortgage broker by day, are also working to keep the Serafini legacy — and piece of Erie’s rich restaurant heritage — intact.
“This is a passion project that means so much to the family,” Serafini said. “We’re doing our best to keep it alive.”
Serafini and Hughes have no connection to the former Serafini’s restaurant at 2642 W. 12th St., which closed during the COVID pandemic and never reopened. That restaurant was sold out of Amanda Serafini’s family at least two generations ago.
What Amanda Serafini and her husband are working with are a growing list of the Serafini Family’s original recipes for pasta sauce, meatballs, salad dressings, wedding soup and more.
They use the certified commercial kitchen at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Thursdays and Fridays to make the food, which is ordered online on Mondays until it’s sold out.
“We don’t advertise on purpose because we want to grow by word-of-mouth and social media,” Serafini said. “We need to keep it contained.”
The orders placed on Mondays and Tuesdays are picked up or delivered (a new service) on Saturdays.
How much food are the Serafinis making?
They typically have between 50 and 100 customers per week, Serafini said, while making French dressing next to Hughes, who was rolling meatballs.
He said he does so much work cooking on Fridays, he doesn’t have to go to they gym to work out. “I’m developing carpal tunnel and my hands are pretty tired when I’m done,” he said with a laugh.
It’s no surprise the work is taking a toll. Those repeat customers have them making 225 meatballs a week, all mixed and rolled by hand, as well as 15 gallons of sauce, about 2 gallons of Italian and French dressings, and 20 gallons of wedding soup, for which they have to make 10 gallons of chicken stock.
Serafinis adding more recipes once perfected
Serafini said they have a ton of recipes. When they add one, they practice it at home until they’re satisfied before adding it to the menu.
They don’t have much room for storage or space to work, another reason they are trying to keep the demand in check. But they have help. When they have big order weeks, say, Christmas, they call in reinforcements from the family, including their kids and Serafini’s mom and friends.
It’s coming up on a year (in April) since they’ve started this project, and it’s starting to become a regular question: So when are they going to open a restaurant?
“People have been reaching out,” with that question, Serafini said, adding that they’re not ready to answer it right now.
How to get The Serafini Family’s food
Find the menu and prices at eatserafinis.com/order-now. Find more information, visit The Serafini Family recipes at eatserafinis.com. Orders open on Mondays and officially close Thursdays, but many items sell out before that. Find their pickup calendar at eatserafinis.com. Pickup is at the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 4701 Old French Road. Delivery is available.
(This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.)
Contact Jennie Geisler at jgeisler@timesnews.com. Find her weekly newsletter at https://profile.goerie.com/newsletters/erielicious/.