It’s a beautiful and powerful story Mohamed Farouq for everyone “Momo”, a story of travel and migration, from the nights spent in the lakeside gardens from a very young man in search of hope to a successful entrepreneur, with a business in Como and a restaurant in Silicon Valley. However, the most important news for at least a generation of Como people is probably that CardaMomo has closed [solo due giorni fa raccontavamo un’altra chiusura, quella del Gesumin: qui i dettagli]. The artisan pizzeria with a wood-fired oven, with its organic flours, pure stone-ground wheat, traditional and wholemeal dough, baked its last pizza on the evening of April 21st. CardaMomo closes, or rather it doesn’t close, it moves to the United States and in its place comes a holiday home. CardaMomo does not close, “you can write that CardaMomo becomes CasaMomo” Momo himself suggests.
“I’ve seen some customers with tears in their eyes in the last week, you know. I really regret leaving Como and I realized that with the effort I put in day after day I have also built something in my relationships. When our most loyal customers found out that we were closing, they came every other day. There was someone who sent me a video of his little son who was really sorry, because he would no longer eat pizza at CardaMomo. After all, everyone came to us, from 3 to 90 years old.”
However, that of Momo, as his friends nicknamed him many years ago, is a story worth telling. It begins and ends with a journey, the first, of hope, from Morocco. “I was sixteen and a half years old when I arrived in Como for the first time, as an illegal immigrant, it was a hot summer in 1989, I spent a week sleeping in the lakeside gardens, during the day I wandered around the city looking for a job. A girl who worked at the Social Restaurant introduced me to Mrs. Gabriella Sassi. They didn’t need it, but she accompanied me to the Diocesan Caritas, there they told me that there was an advertisement in the newspaper for the restaurant at Cisa in Anzano del Parco. They were looking for a dishwasher, room and board was offered. I couldn’t miss that opportunity and I stayed there for about two years, also starting to steal the trade of the pizza chefs a bit. Then I went to Platani in Portichetto, two important venues for those years, I’m sorry they closed.”
Before 2006 and CardaMomo you were churning out takeaway pizzas all over the city.
Another unforgettable step was 1999, ten years after my arrival in Como I decided it was time to take the step. I found a space of 30 square meters in via Carloni, the rent was one million a month, I had to run, but business immediately went well, so much so that after seven years I was ready for the next step.
In fact you didn’t move much… you crossed the road.
A stroke of luck. I saw a real estate agent putting up a sign on the front door. I knew it would have great potential, there was a nice internal garden. I made the big leap, also purchasing the walls and, in August 2006 we started a new story.
You invented “gourmet pizza” before Cracco and other big names…
Let’s not exaggerate. Let’s say that there has always been a lot of study behind my pizzas and the science behind the products used. Naturally leavened dough, flours. But also beers, we were the first to sell Baladin for example in a pizzeria, to buy goat’s cheese from the Casale Roccolo di Binago farm and to source many ingredients from many small agricultural producers in the area. Desserts have also always been a feature of ours. CardaMomo had a soul, but it was thanks to science and the study of the products.
From the lakeside gardens to the successful restaurant, why change again.
For love and a little for the lockdown. In 2018 I moved with Sarika Batra she is Californian, we met in Milan and married in the United States. Her business remained in Silicon Valley in Cupertino, she is an important manager of Tim Draper in the Bitcoin field. Covid stopped travel and I thought I didn’t want to be away from my wife for so long anymore. I stopped for a moment, since I was sixteen I have always run, I decided that I should go to the United States and so I did. The new CardaMomo will probably open in Redwood City as early as June. We will serve pizza, hot and cold appetizers, as well as our desserts.
Have you tried to sell the Como business?
In reality yes and many asked for information, but when they knew that we were not inside the historic center the negotiation ended immediately. So I decided for this transformation. The work is underway, an agency will manage everything, I’m leaving now. Here I would like to thank those who have worked with me in all these years, in particular Renier Surbano who supported me for fifteen years.
