DARIEN — A new specialty Italian shop in Darien is bringing authentic cuisine and high-quality ingredients to the community.
Cucina Daniella on Tokeneke Road, opened a month ago by Norwalk resident Daniella Palazzolo and her husband Robert Brooks, is a one-stop shop for sandwiches, freshly made ready-to-eat Italian meals and groceries, personally selected by Palazzolo.
Growing up in a Sicilian family, food was always an important part of Palazzolo’s life. Every Sunday, she and her entire family would gather at her grandmother’s house for dinner, most of them already living in the same cul-de-sac in Rockland County.
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“For us, the kids, it was so much fun,” she said. “My mother's windows would fog because of the sauce. It was always sauce on Sunday, meatballs, it was very much the routine.”
Palazzolo may be a familiar face to some in the area after several years selling curated ingredients and meals in local farmer’s markets. Now she gets to see her customers every day in what she hopes will become a go-to place in the community.
“Some people want a (food) truck, some people don't want a place, some people want to distribute,’” Palazzolo said. “I liked the idea of people coming into my place.”
After building a career in human resources for more than 20 years, Palazzolo found a passion for curating the kind of high-quality ingredients she loved to cook with in her everyday life.
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Palazzolo opened an online shop through Amazon, then known as Dani's Pantry, and eventually expanded to farmer’s markets nearby, like those in Rowayton and New Canaan. There, she fell in love with interacting with customers and sharing her love of food with people. Seeing a demand for meals, she got her catering license in 2020 and began selling both her ingredients and the dishes they could create.
“It was a new world,” she said. “I’ve never worked in a restaurant. I wasn't in the food industry. I just was being exposed to a whole new thing, and it was very exciting because I was doing what I like to do, what my passion was.”
However, traveling from market to market grew difficult and the commercial kitchen where she cooked was relatively constraining, she said. More than anything, she wanted her own place and, after months of searching, she found a space that matched her vision.
Cucina Daniella offers a variety of options, from quick on-the-go foods, like arancini, to full meals, like chicken parmesan, and more Mediterranean flavors, like her popular falafel sandwich.
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Many of her recipes have close family ties, like the fresh schiacciata bread she learned how to make with her family in Sicily to “Steve’s Chicken,” named in honor of her brother-in-law’s family-favorite dish. Photos of her family decorate the walls of the store.
At the heart of Palazzolo’s cuisine is an emphasis locally-sourced ingredients, something she said she really came to appreciate while working in farmer’s markets.
“It was more in theory before, but then to actually do it and then see how your food is affected by what you start with,” she said. “The quality of what you start with is what you end up with, not just throwing things together. It's really paying attention to your sources, supporting the environment, supporting local small businesses.”
All of the flour that goes into Cucina Daniella’s breads and pastas comes from Wild Hive Farm in Clinton Corners, N.Y., which promotes sustainable, non-GMO agriculture in the Hudson Valley.
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Many of the business’s ingredients and grocery offerings come from local farms such as seasonal produce from Ambler Farm in Wilton or cheeses from Arethusa Farm in Litchfield.
The same standards go into Cucina Daniella’s imported products like the family-run business Marcelli Formaggi that sources cheeses locally from Abruzzo, Italy or Frantoi Cutrera olive oil from southeast Sicily. Palazzolo exclusively uses San Marzano tomatoes certified as locally grown in Italy.
“You can taste it, and that's really the bottom line,” Palazzolo said, pointing to the San Marzano cans she displays in the window. “These are not cheap, but this is the only thing we make our sauce with.”
After a month open, Brooks said the shop is already getting positive feedback from the community, noting how many in the area were happy to support local businesses.
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“At first, people were walking in and telling us 'This is just what we were hoping would open up here,' ” he said. “Now we’re getting people walking in saying, ‘My neighbor told me how great you guys are doing and I really wanted to check you out.’ ”
That’s exactly the kind of news Palazzolo wants to hear. While some owners dream of expanding to a whole chain of stores, Palazzolo’s primary focus is setting down roots and embracing the sense of community in Darien.
“I’d like to become a fabric of the neighborhood,” she said.“I just want to do a good job and make a good living and become part of the community and just continue to do good things… become a favorite neighborhood place.”
Correction: A caption for a photo with this story has been updated to reflect the name of the restaurant is Cucina Daniella and to correct the names of the owners, Daniella Palazzolo and Bob Brooks.
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