Capichurri

Capichurri is a caterer, take-away and food truck business in Mendrisio, in the canton of Ticino. It cooks made-to-measure menus for weddings, birthdays and company events, and its catering page promises a complete service in which the team brings the tables, chairs, cutlery and plates as well as the food.

From a sandwich to a catering kitchen

The "chi siamo" (about us) page tells the story in some detail. In 2019 the founder, Francesco Capizzi, turned an idea that came to him on holiday in Portugal into the business. The name is a mix of CAPIzzi and chimiCHURRI, the sauce that inspired the first sandwich.

Capichurri started with street food, taking its sandwiches out on the road in an equipped food truck. From there it moved into catering for private events and took its first steps catering for film sets. In 2021, as the page puts it, growth and the challenges of the pandemic pushed the team to reinvent itself and look for a fixed base with home delivery. In 2022 it opened the "Capichurri Take Away & Lab" at La Filanda di Mendrisio.

Gabriele Lasiu then joined the company as a partner and member of the staff, and Lorenzo joined in the same period. The page's team section shows four names: Francesco, Gabriele, Lorenzo and Riccardo. The team sums up what it has built as "una realtà creativa e innovativa del mondo gastronomico" (a creative and innovative presence in the food world).

The cooking

The vision section is where the style comes through. The team aims to offer a culinary experience different from any other, drawing on its members' food travels around the world and their working lives, and bringing them to the table. In their words, "La nostra proposta gastronomica, pur nella sua semplicità, non scende mai nella banalità" (our cooking, for all its simplicity, never becomes banal). They describe tasting a dish as being like taking a trip, and promise dishes that tell stories of distant countries.

The dishes shown on the catering page make that concrete. There is a ciabatta picanha with beef, chimichurri sauce, caramelized onions and salad, and a beef tartare ciabatta with anchovy butter, arugula and crispy onion. The about page also has a section headed "Le nostre Tartare" (our tartares). The flavor is international street food made with care, rather than the classic Ticinese or Italian banquet.

The wedding offer

The catering page describes four features:

• Menu personalizzati. Menus are made to measure, built around your needs and the wishes and tastes of your guests.
• Adatto ad ogni occasione. Birthdays, company events and weddings are all named.
• Ingredienti di stagione. The team values the seasonality of ingredients, respecting their natural cycle.
• Servizio completo. "Tavoli, sedie, posate, piatti... non dovrai preoccuparti di nulla" (tables, chairs, cutlery, plates, you will not have to worry about anything), with the team taking care of every detail.

The page also says its catering offers a wide range of options for every palate, naming vegetarians, vegans and people with food intolerances. That is the business's own promise, and anyone with a serious allergy should talk it through with the kitchen directly.

The full-service point is the practical headline for a wedding. A couple marrying in a garden, a grotto or a village hall can hand the furniture and tableware to the same team that cooks, which cuts down the number of suppliers to coordinate from abroad.

Film sets and other work

Capichurri also has a separate line catering for film productions, with personalized menus for crews wherever they are shooting. For a wedding couple this mostly shows that the team is used to feeding people on location, away from its own kitchen, which is exactly what an outdoor wedding asks of a caterer.

Contact

The catering page invites inquiries on WhatsApp ("Scrivici su Whatsapp!"). The footer gives the operating base at Via Industria 5, 6850 Mendrisio, the phone number as +41 091 229 92 20, and the email capichurri.food@gmail.com. The registered office is at Via Rime 20, 6850 Mendrisio. The site also has a contact page, a take-away page and a food truck page.

The about page closes with an invitation, "Vi aspettiamo al nostro Laboratorio!" (we look forward to seeing you at our Lab). For a couple on a planning trip to Ticino, the take-away at La Filanda is the easy way to taste the kitchen's cooking before committing, and to meet the people who would run the wedding. The footer also lists the company's business identification number and commercial register entry, so this is a registered company rather than a side project.

What the site leaves open

Several things a couple planning from abroad will want to know are not on the catering or about pages:

• Prices. No per-person price, package or rental charge is published.
• Guest numbers. There is no minimum or maximum for an event.
• Service area. The pages do not say how far from Mendrisio the team will travel, or whether travel is charged.
• Staff and drinks. Service staff, wine and bar service are not described.
• Language. Although these pages sit under an /en/ address, their text is in Italian. The site does not say whether the team works in English, so ask in your first message.
• References. There are no wedding testimonials or galleries of past weddings on these pages.

WhatsApp is a real help here: a couple abroad can send photos of the venue, the date and a rough guest count, and get a conversation going without a phone call.

Who it suits

Capichurri suits couples marrying around Mendrisio and elsewhere in Ticino who want relaxed, generous, internationally minded food rather than a formal hotel menu, and who like the idea of a young business that started with a food truck. It fits a garden party, a long outdoor lunch or an informal evening reception especially well, and the complete service with tables, chairs and tableware makes it practical at a venue with nothing on site.

It is less of a match for a couple wanting a classic multi-course Italian banquet, since nothing on the pages shows that style, or for a very large wedding, since the site gives no sense of scale. And because the pages are in Italian, a couple who do not speak Italian should settle the language of planning at the start.