A hundred years ago our Grandfather Pietro Fazzi used to go and buy the weekly supply of coffee for his Mother and Father, the shop he was told to go to was the famous Torrefazione Colombo in Via Filungo in the centre of Lucca.
His family became good customers of this establishment and Pietro became friendly with the proprietors, so much so that when he eventually started his famous business in Glasgow "Fazzi Brothers Ltd" Colombo gave Pietro the recipe for their special coffee, the same coffee that has been served to the Glasgow public for the last 90 years firstly by the Fazzi Brothers and for the last 15 years Sandro and Piero Sarti have been serving their Grand fathers special coffee. We have often been congratulated on our coffee and been told that we are definitely the best coffee in the U.K and also rate highly even to Italian standards.
When Pietro and his brothers Giuseppe and Angelo opened Fazzi Brothers in Glasgow, the customer base was 99% Italian, in those days at the beginning of the 20th Century the Scots did not travel much further than Millport or Rothsay and Italian food was hardly eaten, olive oil was usually used for medicinal purposes and bought at the chemist.
In April 1947 Fazzi Brothers played an April fool on Glasgow by placing a potted tree in the shop window, the tree was then draped with cooked spaghetti and a little notice explained that this was the famous spaghetti tree native to Italy. Many people that day enquired about purchasing seeds.
The Italian immigrant community was growing rapidly and they needed their type of food so the Fazzi brothers went back to their home city of Lucca and began importing from Bertolli for olive oil, Mennucci for pasta, Scopitani for barrels of red and white wine and local butchers for Prosciutto di Parma, salame etc. Many of the above have become huge companies since those days.
Today Fratelli Sarti is one of the very few Italian *(Toscana / Liguria) restaurants that still import salumi from Parma and Siena, wines from every region of Italy and whole selection of specialities from the whole boot of the Italian peninsula.
* It is virtually impossible to be an Italian restaurant, all restaurants who claim to be Italian are almost certainly cooking food in the style from the region that the owner comes from. Sandro and Piero come from La Spezia in Liguria and Lucca in Toscana.
Every region of Italy cook in different styles, there are hundreds of ways just to prepare a ragu'.
Please note : Fratelli Sarti has no affiliation with restaurants in Cambuslang and Falkirk called "Fratellis".