The Sophisticated Crepe

Ravenous

by Robin Catalano and photographs by Hillary Harvey, October 29, 2007

After a friendly greeting and a handshake, Lauren Wickizer holds out a paper. “This should answer a lot of your questions, and give you all the facts,” she says, gesturing to the information she’s typed up about Ravenous, the restaurant she co-owns in Saratoga Springs. One can forgive Wickizer, a former copywriter and occasional victim of newspaper error, for taking the thorough approach with the media (“Ravenous—not a French word!” the paper explains. “Ravenous—as in, really hungry.”) As it turns out, her three-point method is thoughtful, organized, and, well, more than a little useful in describing the restaurant:

1. The owners of Ravenous are: the aforementioned Wickizer, originally from Westchester, New York; Tina Laino, a former clothing designer and health-food store owner from New York City; and Francesco D’Amico, Laino’s son and Wickizer’s husband, and a chef who has worked in a variety of restaurants in Boston, Santa Fe, New Orleans, and Seattle. Wickizer’s parents live in Saratoga, and when she and D’Amico decided to relocate from the West Coast, they zeroed in on the town. “We like that it’s near family, but it also has good all-year-round business,” Wickizer relates, “especially from the Skidmore College students during the school year and the tourists in the summer.” Laino, an accomplished home chef, applied her skills to helping D’Amico develop the recipes, while Wickizer took on the business end of the restaurant.

2. Why they started Ravenous: Avid travelers, Wickizer and D’Amico were smitten with the idea of European “street food”—the quick, eat-with-your-hands, inexpensive stuff you buy from the many vendors manning carts all over the continent. Initially, the concept was a tough sell. “Lots of people had no idea what a crepe was—they thought it was a sandwich. Or women would come in with groups of girlfriends. My guess is that men stayed away because they thought we were serving something ‘feminine’ like quiche,” Wickizer states.