Cossetta Alimentari

The restaurant which became Cossetta's was originally founded by Michael Cossetta, an Italian Immigrant from Calabria, Italy in 1911. The restaurant was originally founded as a small grocery store and delicatessen.^[5][6][7] The Cossetta family settled in the Upper Levee, an Italian neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota which consisted of many immigrants from the Molise region of Italy.^[5][8][9] According to the Hennepin History Museum, many Italian immigrants settled in Saint Paul in the 1860's and quickly became the fourth largest ethnic group in the state, following Germans, Swedes, and Norwegians.^[1]

In 1911, Michael Cossetta and his wife Irene Cossetta (nee: DeFranco) founded a food market in the neighborhood which sold Italian cuisine and groceries among other foodstuffs.^[5][9] According to the Minnesota Historical Society, the store was originally located on the corner of 22 South Ryan Avenue in Saint Paul.^[10] Serious flooding over the years led the city government to begin condemning stores and houses along the levee, which forced the family relocated to the restaurant's current location at 211 7th Street West, just south of Summit Avenue.^[8]

Since the 1980's, Cossetta's has been regarded as one of Saint Paul's most notable pizzerias and Italian restaurants near the downtown area.^[5][11] Situated on the corner of West Seventh Street and North Chestnut Street, the restaurant is a popular spot for locals and tourists and is a popular destination for those attending events at the nearby Xcel Energy Center.^[12] In 2019, WCCO-TV reported that the restaurant and store was nominated as one of the best international grocery stores and pizzerias in the state of Minnesota.^[13] In a 2013 interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dave Cossetta, Michael Cossetta's great-great-grandson, stated that the restaurant is "a family destination - Rich people and poor people sat next to each other, and I wanted to keep that".^[14]

Cossetta's offers a wide variety of Italian food. This includes pizza, pasta, and stromboli, as well as Italian desserts such as biscotti, lingua de gato, mille-feuille, cannoli, and baci di dama, among many others. The establishment also includes an Italian market which was added to the original building during a 2010 restaurant expansion.^[15] The restaurant went under further expansion in 2012 which cost upwards $10.5 million according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and WCCO.^[14][16] Currently, the restaurant is owned by Dave Cossetta, Michael Cossetta's great-great-grandson, who is the fourth generation of the Cossetta family to own the establishment.^[14][17][18] One of Cossetta's recent award-winning desserts is panettone, an Italian yeast cake, which the restaurant has become renowned for making and ships worldwide.^{[1][2][19][20]}

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  Stromboli from Cossetta's
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  Biscotti from Cossetta's.
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  Culatello from Cossetta's.
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  Sfogliatella from Cossetta's.
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  French Napoleon pastry (Mille-feuille) from Cossetta's
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  Another variant of Mille-feuille from Cossetta's.
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  An apple tart from Cossetta's
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  Baci di dama from Cossetta's
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  Lengua de gato from Cossetta's