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When you think of an Italian bakery, you probably think of the obvious...pasta, pastries, and so on. But you'd fall far short of listing everything on the shelves at Lansing's Roma Bakery.
How about toodle beans? Orecchiette pasta? Gnocchi? Pancetta? If you don't know what they are, and can't pronounce them then it's time you paid Roma Bake a visit.
Mena Castriciano started Roma Bakery with her husband, Sostine, 25 years ago, just over a block north of the store's current location at 428 North Cedar Street. They moved to their current, larger location about seven years later.
Mena came to Lansing at the age of 12 from the Calabria region of Italy. Sostine emigrated from Sicily to Canada as a 19-year-old who had already spent a lifetime learning the bakery business. Working for Mena's cousin in Hamilton, Ontario, Sostine met Mena and married her after a four-year courtship. When the couple came to Lansing, job opportunities for a man of Sostine's talents were hard to come by.
A job at Shafer's Bakery paid the bills for a while, but Sostine yearned to put his skills to better use. A loan from Mena's aunt was combined with wedding gift money, and the couple went into business for themselves.
Both have since become American citizens.
"It was very hard at first," explained Mena Castriciano. "People didn't know what hard bread was. They didn't know rum cake. Lansing was not into that kind of food at that time. Now, people are...