Che Roba!

Most Italian restaurants widen to survive — pasta, pizza, a veal cutlet, a dessert cart, something on the menu for everyone at the table. Che Roba! narrowed on purpose. What it sells, first and mostly, is focaccia sandwiches: sixteen of them, each a fixed combination the kitchen assembles the same way every order, laid onto bread it mixes and proves through a long, slow rise before baking fresh each morning. There is no build-your-own board and no running list of substitutions. The only choice a customer makes is which of the sixteen; the kitchen has already settled every choice after that.

The combinations read like a walk through an Italian deli case. The namesake Che Roba! leads with prosciutto, burrata, and truffle spread under a handful of arugula — the clearest first order, and the one that shows the kitchen's rich-against-fresh instinct without any tinkering. The Però turns softer and herbal, with mortadella, burrata, and pesto; the Fuoco carries the heat, built on hot salami, smoked provolone, and caramelized onion spread. From there the list works through capocollo with aged pecorino and honey on the Golosa, roasted beef with mushrooms and a thread of honey on the Ciccia, Italian sausage with eggplant on the Contadina, oven-roasted turkey and buffalo-milk mozzarella on the Patrizio, and a gorgonzola-and-rapini Vegetariana that treats the meatless order as a real sandwich rather than an afterthought. The cured meats, cheeses, and olive oils are largely imported. A Caprese of tomato, buffalo-milk mozzarella, and basil is about as plain as the counter gets.

The fixed combinations are the whole idea, not a limitation of it. Each sandwich is composed — the honey set against the capocollo, the truffle against the prosciutto, the chilli oil cutting through capocollo and rapini on the Papà — and balanced so the parts hold together, which is harder to guarantee the moment a counter lets everyone assemble their own. The imported meats and cheeses set the register, but the daily bread does the rest of the work. It is bread built to carry weight, holding oil, cured meat, and soft cheese without going slack. Focaccia left to rise slowly before it meets the oven carries a chew and an open, oil-crisped crumb no delivered loaf can match, and it is the surface every one of these sandwiches is designed around.

The counter does not end at sandwiches. Antonella Di Cristofaro brings a gelato and pastry background from years spent in Italy, and it shows in what sits alongside the focaccia: gelato and cappuccino for the walk, single-portion lasagna and take-home Italian goods for the drive back. A shelf of imported pantry items — the same class of oils and cured goods that go into the sandwiches — gives the counter a second reason to stop. It is enough range to make Che Roba! a stop rather than a single errand: a sandwich now, a scoop of gelato for the kids, a lasagna reheated two nights later.

Luca Del Rosso and Antonella Di Cristofaro opened the shop on River Road in late 2023, according to local reporting; Luca cooks, and the focaccia philosophy is his. The two built the place around the food they knew from smaller Italian communities, which is what explains the discipline of the menu — this is a translation of a particular memory, not a survey of a cuisine. It keeps six days a week, closed Tuesdays, mid-morning into evening, and most of it goes out the door on a strip where the summer crowd rewards whoever can feed it fastest. Che Roba! answers a narrower question instead: what a good Italian sandwich tastes like when someone sets out to make only that, and to make it the same way every day.