Father & son to open Buona Notte Cafe on Maple Street

Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer writes: Father and son Robert and Matthew Killian plan to open Buona Notte Cafe and Catering in downtown Glens Falls at 21 Bay Street, Suite 301, hoping to open by December 15 “at the latest.”

“Mostly Italian food,” Robert said.

Like “Chicken di capo, it’s got spinach, chicken, madeira wine,” Matthew said.

And “Ossobuco and lamb shanks,” Robert added.

“It’s just something that I feel this place needs,” he said. “Because I gotta be honest with you, as an Italian, when I came up here and I went to all the places people told me about for Italian food, I don’t understand what people are tasting.”

“It’s going to be dine-in, take out, delivery and catering.” The Killians said they started catering locally last year.

“We didn’t really do a lot of catering for money,” Robert said. “We gave out a lot of food, we promoted the business by making trays…bringing it to municipal buildings and banks and health offices.”

He said working without a full kitchen limited them. That’s a big part of why they’re taking this space downtown.

Robert said he’s a culinary trained “chef de cuisine” — and Matthew, 21, will do most of the operating of the business.

Robert said he’s invested “close to $200 grand,” in the project. “This is what my mother wanted for [Matthew], and that’s why the money was there.”

Robert is from Queens. “I moved my mother up here in 2019 and then she passed away six months later.”

Matthew graduated from high school in Fort Ann, where he lived with his mother. He said he’s worked at the Boardwalk in Lake George for recent years.

Robert said Matthew “wanted to do something” — start a restaurant.

“My mother said, if it came time to do it and he was mature enough, then do it. So I waited until he was 21. He showed me that he can take care of bills and be responsible, and I decided to invest.”

The restaurant will seat “about 20 to 25 people,” Robert said. It’s “a 1200 square foot place — 600 square feet of that’s my kitchen” for catering.

“You don’t want to have 90 tables, and you have to worry about service and consistency going down. That’s something I will not allow to happen.”