Every great restaurant needs an inspiration, if it is indeed to become a great restaurant.
The inspiration for RigaTony's came for me as a young man bumming around on the streets of New York's Little Italy district. Whatever your ethnic background, you couldn't help but be lured and seduced by the controlled chaos of this concentrated version of Italian culture. All your senses were involved from the smells of roasting garlic and fresh baked foccacia, the hawking of street vendors, the clutter of sidewalk cafes, the folk lore of the bullet ridden walls, and steam billowing up from the subway grates, all accompanied to the strains of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Whether you stopped for an espresso and a fresh biscotti or a full blown white table cloth Chianti meal served by a tuxedoed waiter, it was an experience you would never forget. Now obviously one little guy from New York can't possibly reproduce that singularly unique street scene in the middle of our desert town, but 800,000 diners over our five years in business think we came pretty close.