For over seventeen years, Vince McConeghy has been active in the Western New York food service industry as an owner/operator of multiple bakery and restaurant operations.

McConeghy is self-trained, and genetically pre-disposed to food service, having been born into a family that operated a successful restaurant in Niagara Falls from 1940 to 1950.

Restaurant Experience: dishwashing, pantry, pizza making, potager, sauté, grill, expeditor, general manager, maitre d’ and bartender.

Bakery Experience: formulation, mixer, bench hand, oven operator, fermentation guru.

Biggest Culinary Influence: My grandmother Mariangela Capolupo, who possessed the most complete repertoire of dishes devoid of garlic and onions, which she deemed too offensive to be used in her cooking

Favorite Cookbook: AlfredoViazzi’s Cucina & Nostalgia. Viazzi was an exuberant storyteller and a mezzo cuoco, which is a term to describe someone who knows a little bit about everything in the kitchen. That term sums up my career in food service.

Last Meal: Eggs over easy, toast, coffee.  Let’s keep it simple.

Favorite Food:  Baguette.  A perfectly scored baguette is unparalled in all sensory applications of food and eating.

Favorite Food Story

Once, while visiting relatives in Italy, I visited the ruins at Paestum, thirty clicks south of Salerno with my cousin, Donato.  We drove through what can only be described as the Rodeo Drive of Buffalo-milk mozzarella dairies, one posited next to the other on a sweeping boulevard of the most famous latterias in all of Italy.

I waited for my cousin to finish his dissertation on the significance of the main Doric temple at Paestum, erected in 6BC, but my mind drifted to those glorious dairies where the most splendid balls of mozzarella were produced.

“So Donato,” I prompted my cousin. “ Do you think there is life elsewhere in the universe.”

My cousin was taken aback by the turn of the conversation.  He was not sure where I was going with this.

“Of course,” he said. “I believe there all life forms lower than us and higher than us.”

“Does this mean that the higher life forms enjoy a cuisine better than Italian cuisine.”

My cousin shook his head for a moment.  I had entrapped him in the Doric columns of what is knowable to us mere humans.  “This,” he said, “ is impossible!”