Italian Michele Sassanelli chose not to spend 10 years of his life in Albania as a simple worker.
After working for 5 consecutive years for a call center in Durrës, in 2020, he made one of the decisions that changed the course of his life: opening his own legal consultancy office for immigrants, “TravelMed Albania”.
The start of his first business was as successful as he expected. In fact, the establishment of the agency opened other doors of success for Michele in Albania.
Within a short period of time since opening his agency, the 42-year-old managed to broker deals with foreign nationals that would be in his favor.
After a long period of work offering foreigners residence permits, visas, and various documentation, Michele took the next step in business: collaborating with Albanian dental, surgical, and aesthetic clinics.
“For 5 years now, I have been mediating clients from Italy and suggesting them to the relevant clinics. Whoever is interested in teeth, I send to the dental clinics with which I work. There are different clinics that I collaborate with ,” explains Michele.
Being an Italian citizen and acquiring the Albanian language over the years has made it much easier for Michele to mediate clients between the two countries, Italy-Albania, and beyond. Despite this, he emphasizes that there are many challenges to reaching the pinnacle of success in this sector.
In Italy, according to him, in recent years, quite a few television programs have been made that create a negative impression on the audience regarding the services offered in Albania, especially in the dental maintenance sector.
“It has become a problem here recently, that for the 2.3 million inhabitants that we currently have, we have 9,000 dental clinics. Something absurd. They have multiplied quite a bit. There are those who are not doctors but open their own clinics and work without having any idea about the sector,” the Italian continues, with a facial expression that conveyed surprise.
Although some Italians overlook Albania to spend their holidays, the rest will be found on the streets of Tirana or Durrës, enjoying Albanian nature, food, and a variety of services.
Since one of their next vacation destinations is Albania, Michele felt an inner desire to bring his passion and adoration for Italian cuisine back to the center of Durrës, a city that is only 8 hours away by ferry from Bari, his birthplace.
Thus Michele began a new chapter of life in Durrës, where for ten years his heart, companionship and love, the red-haired Durrësian, Malvina, has been.
After 5 years flying by providing foreign citizens with various Albanian clinics, more determined than ever before, the 42-year-old opened his restaurant “Casa Mia Trattoria Italiana” on Mustafa Varoshi Street. Those who say dreams are unattainable are wrong for Michele.
“I’ve had a dream of opening a typical traditional Italian restaurant in my drawer. And I just took it out of the drawer, for a month now “Casa Mia Trattoria Italiana” has been located here, behind the Palace of Culture. Here you will feel exactly like in Puglia. The combined colors, white with red, the flowers on the tables, the jars filled with dried pasta, everything Italian,” explains Michele as he tries to accompany each word with a hand movement to show what is there and where.
The spaghetti in the jar, placed on the shelves that were on the side of the wall at the entrance to the restaurant (both on the first and second floors), the tables, on which were placed tablecloths striped in white and red and on them a vase of basil, gave the impression that here everything is cooked with precision like in Italy, and that was the case.
A menu that speaks Italian is led by various antipasti, followed by salads, granitas, first courses (which include typical Italian foods from spaghetti to chicory beans). The menu is further enriched with second courses consisting of seafood. Regardless of the taste or uniqueness of cooking seafood in the Italian way, for Michele the first courses always remain the favorites.
An Italian trattoria, with a variety of traditional dishes, survives thanks to the dedicated work of two chefs and 6 other employees, including waiters, bartenders, and cleaners.
“We have two very good chefs, each with over 20 years of experience in the kitchen. One is Italian, the other Albanian. But this Albanian also lived in Italy before and knows Italian cuisine very well,” Michele continues as his eyes turn to the restaurant’s kitchen, where the people who work for his restaurant stand. Even though he is their employer, Michele wants to not consider them as employees but as his friends who collaborate to achieve success together.
Although he understood the Albanian language quite well, he was not so good at speaking it. As he struggled to find the right words to give correct answers, he was often helped by his friend who helped him with taking and delivering orders at the restaurant, his waiter.
When asked what his strongest point was or the motivation to never stop walking towards success, Michele hesitated, taking a few minutes to think of the most accurate and complete answer in Albanian. After the silence completely overtook the Italian superior, with notes of humor, his “friend” (mentioned above) intervened in a loud tone: Woman!
After this reaction, Michele chose to break the silence and with a sincere smile addressed the boy with a laugh: Exactly. You found it! The woman….
An enviable superior-employee relationship. Not only did the working hours at the Italian trattoria pass with laughter and full of life, but the 42-year-old Italian often came to the aid of the employees.
Without any shame, and even with all joy, from Monday to Sunday, during lunchtime, when his restaurant was so full that his employees didn’t even have time to drink water, Michele would roll up his shirt sleeves, grab an apron, and get to cooking.
“If I don’t help them grow their clientele with good, quality work, who else will,” Michele says of the hours he spends over the pans in his trattoria’s kitchen.
An Italian citizen, who, although he is the owner of two businesses and is known in Durrës for his collaborations, conveys a positivity and modesty.
After years of difficult life in Italy where he worked in everything from the construction sector to the service sector such as bars and restaurants, Michele, unlike a popular saying, was not “born with a shirt on”, although he now wore one every day.
Dining and Cooking