Bay Ridge has always had a small-town flavor — now it’s getting a taste of the Village.
Pasticceria Rocco — a 40-year institution in Manhattan’s West Village famed for its cakes, cookies, and cannoli — is due to open a second location on Fourth Avenue between 94th and 95th streets next month.
The bakery’s owners have run a kitchen for wholesale orders in a space behind the storefront for the past two years, and when the front area opened up, they decided to whip up a whole new store.
The shop represents a homecoming for the owners, who have lived in Bay Ridge for two generations.
“That’s probably the most important reason we’re opening the store here,” said Rocco’s spokesman Ralph Aloe.
Aloe’s wife Patricia Generoso-Aloe and his brother-in-law Rocco Generoso, Jr., took over the West Village bakery from their founding father, Rocco Generoso, Sr., three years ago — and with business cooking in the city, they decided to see if they could make the same dough in Bay Ridge.
“Now is a good time to start expanding, and come back to their hometown, where their roots are,” Aloe said.
The owners plan to try some new, less sugary recipes at the Bay Ridge store, including paninis and focaccia, when it opens in May. But they promise to keep their old-fashioned methods of preparing their culinary delights.
“It’s what we do. We’re not a corporate facility. We make everything by hand,” said Aloe. “The whole brand is based around the idea of family, and making things the right way.”
The Generosos are not the first Manhattan Italian delicacy-makers to set up shop in the area. Joe Monaco — a veteran of the East Village’s Veniero’s Pasticceria and Cafe — opened his own eponymous store on Third Avenue in 2011. And Pasticceria Rocco’s Bleecker Street neighbors, Faicco’s, have maintained a second salumeria on 11th Avenue in Dyker Heights for more than 70 years.
