By popular demand: Armando's pasta sauce

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
LIBERTY -- For 20 years, customers at Armando and Nerina LoCastro's restaurant have been raving about their pasta sauce and pleading for the recipe.
For 20 years, the LoCastros have politely refused.
Now, two decades after they began serving their Italian recipes to Mahoning Valley diners, the Girard couple has decided to go retail with the sauce that tops so many of their restaurant dishes.
Armando's Homemade Pasta Sauce, named after their Armando's Restaurant on Belmont Avenue here, made its debut this fall at the Churchill Commons Giant Eagle here and at Institutional Foods in Warren.
Roger Blackstone, manager of the Giant Eagle store, said he was amazed at how quickly the product disappeared from the shelves. "It was phenomenal. We went through 20 cases in no time," he said.
LoCastro is not surprised. The restaurateur says his sauce is simply the best there is -- his own recipe, no preservatives, only the best ingredients, and every batch carefully mixed and measured himself in the small restaurant kitchen.
"I wanted to put something that nobody has in the market. Now everybody can enjoy it," he said with a heavy Italian accent.
Easy on the tummy: A big selling point for the sauce recipe, he said, is that even people with stomach problems can eat Armando's sauce.
The owner likes to tell about a Hubbard man who hadn't eaten tomato-based pasta sauce for 20 years for health reasons but finally agreed, after much coaxing, to try Armando's product.
"He loved it so much, he comes back all the time," LoCastro said proudly. "He had rehearsal dinners for all three of his children here."
The sauce-making has added considerably to LoCastro's work schedule. He comes in at 5 a.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, his "sauce days," and mixes huge pots of the pasta sauce, the same recipe he's always served at his restaurants.
Alone in the eatery's small kitchen, he jokes that only he and the state health inspectors who oversee the preparation process know the exact ingredients he puts in. Restaurant employees jar, label and package the sauce after it's simmered all day.
On Fridays, LoCastro stirs up another large batch of sauce for the restaurant to serve over the weekend. Thursdays are meatball days.
The eatery is open Thursday through Sunday, and some Saturdays, the couple also opens their Villa Paradiso Night Club adjacent to the restaurant.
Mondays are their only day off, but the LoCastros say they don't mind their six-days-a-week schedule.
"This was our dream," Mrs. LoCastro said with a wide grin. "We love our customers like our own family. We like to make them feel at home."
Just like family: Regular customers are a mainstay at the family owned restaurant, and Mrs. LoCastro loves to come out of the kitchen to visit with them.
Some live in the area and have been eating at Armando's since the couple opened their first Italian food carryout in Girard in the early 1980s.
Others from out of state make the restaurant a regular stopping place when they pass through Ohio. The owners said they have regulars from as far away as California, Arizona, Texas, Chicago and New York.
LoCastro said the couple's successful business didn't come easily.
Born and reared in Italy, they were newlyweds when they came to the United States in 1972 with the dream of opening an Italian restaurant. They had to put their plans on hold, however, because neither spoke English.
Biography: At first they lived in Girard with LoCastro's sister and brother-in-law, Maria and Guy Maiorana, and the couple's loving home was their only solace in a difficult time.
"I worked so many factory jobs. It was a little tough for us. Nine years went by," he recalled. "When you don't speak the language, you can do nothing."
Still, he was determined not to give up. "I never wanted anyone to laugh behind my back," he explained. "It was my idea [to come to the United States], so I had to make it."
Finally, in the early 1980s, they opened the first Armando's, a small carryout business near St. Rose Church in Girard.
The business grew quickly and, two years later, they moved the business to Hubbard and started offering table service. Their son Angelo, now 29, was only 7 when he started running the cash register in his parents' growing business.
Six years later, the LoCastros needed to expand again and found the two-story building on Belmont Avenue that still houses their restaurant and night club. They bought the building and decorated it themselves in a homey style to suit their tastes.
Their menu has grown to seven pages and includes a host of pasta dishes, pizza, salads and appetizers. The couple's eggplant parmigiana is their No. 1 seller, but a tortellini dish made with olives is a close second.
They still miss their family in Italy, the LoCastros admitted, but they close the restaurant for a few weeks every year to travel overseas for a long visit, and they call their family in Italy every week. "AT & amp;T loves us," he joked.
The couple has some family nearby. Their son and daughter-in-law live in Austintown -- he does the bookkeeping and other paperwork for the restaurant -- and the Maioranas still live in Girard.
LoCastro said the smiling, satisfied faces of their customers make the business worthwhile and they never get tired of hearing -- and talking about -- the compliments.
"We had a chef from New York, one who teaches others how to cook, who said he'd never seen such sauce," LoCastro remembered.
"He says, 'It melts in your mouth. The more I eat, the more I want to eat!' Now, that was a big compliment."
vinarsky@vindy.com