If you’ve ever been to Italy, you know what it’s like to fall in love. Beyond quaint countrysides, weathered city streets and works of art just about everywhere you look, it really is the carb-filled dream laced with aromas of cheese and espresso that you always imagined it’d be.

For lovers of Italian foods in Hawai‘i, this means yearning. Frequent yearning. So when we heard that longtime Italian chef Donato Loperfido and his wife, Desiree, had finally opened their cheese-centric Italian café, we made plans to head over immediately.