Founded in 1968 under the name Caserta by Vittorio Caldarone, who left Italy alone at the age of 13. The family never changed the recipe.
In 1968, Vittorio Caldarone and his wife Maria Di Meo opened a pastry shop on rue Saint-Viateur that they simply named Caserta, after the Italian province where Vittorio came from. Having left Italy alone at thirteen to work in a hotel kitchen in Switzerland, it was there that he learned pastry making - the recipes he brought back are still, today, the only ones the house uses. In the 1970s, the couple moved to rue Dante, in the premises previously occupied by the pastry shop of a certain Mr. Alati; out of homage, they add his name to theirs: Alati-Caserta.
The business has not changed either its decor or its recipes: the original wooden windows are still there, as is the absence of seats inside - we eat outside, on the terrace or in the neighboring Dante Park, in front of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense church, built at the time of the first wave of Italian immigration. Vittorio Caldarone and his son Marco are the owners today; Linda Savoca, Marco's wife, has managed the store for over twenty years. The house remains open on Christmas Day to feed the faithful coming out of mass across the street: “We can't not open now,” she says.
The cannoli — ricotta and chocolate chips, pistachio, tiramisu, limoncello — are filled to order; the secret, according to Linda, lies as much in the cream as in the shell.