In a quiet corner of New Jersey, the founders went home to Italy.

The smell of espresso reached the room before the coffee did. It was brewing on the stove in a moka pot, the way it has been made in Italian kitchens for generations, and it filled the house while we set up lights and ran cable across the floor.

The house belongs to Sam Vinci, one of Casa Ragazzi’s owners. He brought us in to launch the restaurant, and every conversation leading up came back to the same place. Before anyone tastes the food or sits in the dining room, they should meet the people who built it.

We set a chair in a quiet corner, the pot on a small table beside it, and each founder took his turn. We asked how it all started and gave them the space to reminisce.

Most people stiffen once a camera turns on. But that little corner of Sam’s house carried the founders somewhere familiar, back to the Italy they grew up in, and they sat back and settled in. Our questions loosened into conversation. The founders reached into their childhoods, into memories they had held close for most of their lives, the kind people usually keep for family. They shared them openly, without guarding any of it. The camera faded into the room, there only to witness.