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Capri's Cuisine held its grand opening last week, surrounded by friends, family and with special guests, state Sen. Bob Duff and Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling in attendance.
It is the labor of love of co-owners Sandra Salazar and her husband, Omar Gomez. Their son Mathias Sellanes serves as store manager and used his carpentry talents to renovate the store before its opening a little more than a month ago. It's located at 170 Main St.
Gomez has been involved in the food business for years, working in Stamford, New Canaan, Darien, Shelton and New York. He has built up a vast knowledge about food and pastries. Sandra has her own talents.
"She's the head of marketing, she knows how to sell anything," Sellanes joked of his mother.
Among the items served up is an Uruguayan favorite — a chaja cake made of meringue, peach, caramel and two different types of whipped cream, Sellanes said. Bizcocho is also widely popular and is similar to a croissant and can either have sweet or savory fillings.
Salazar said they wanted to open Capri as an opportunity to run a family business. Gomez's reputation for mouth watering pastries was well known to family and friends, Sellanes said.
"It first started as a hobby because he liked making pastries," Sellanes said. "It just exploded, everyone wanted to order the pastries and it went from there."
They began looking for a site about a year ago and decided Norwalk was the best place to open the business, Salazar said. The family plans on moving to Norwalk to be closer to the business.
It also enabled them to carve out a niche for themselves as the nearest Uruguayan-oriented pastry shop is in Queens, N.Y., Sellanes said.
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