Building the Valley: New venture from Tony's Pizza Cafe owner brings fast casual Italian fare to Buffalo Township

Andrea “Tony” Coppola sees his newest restaurant in Buffalo Township as a taste of the future.

Healthy ingredients and trendy flavors are hallmarks of Toasted Amo, the Italian sandwich shop he opened last month in Buffalo Plaza.

It marks a stark departure from the area’s plentiful fast food joints — and Coppola’s other restaurant, Tony’s Pizza Cafe.

The Naples, Italy, native for more than a decade has run a pizza parlor also along Route 356, in South Pike Square. The restaurant is known for New York-style pies piled high with creative toppings.

This time, Coppola is drawing on his home country’s street food for inspiration.

Toasted Amo’s menu features 16 sandwiches (including a monthly special) on schiacciata, a Tuscan bread that’s like focaccia, but thinner and crunchier. Many have quintessential Italian ingredients, such as prosciutto, zucchini and cacio de roma.

“I want to give my culture to them,” Coppola said.

Others, such as the King Klucker hot honey fried chicken sandwich, are full-on American. The Tuscan Crunch mixes both culinary traditions, pairing fried chicken with ingredients including scamorza and pancetta.

So far, Coppala has sold about 200 sandwiches a day, mostly through online orders — yet another difference from Tony’s Pizza Cafe, which relies on in-person visits and takeout orders over the phone.

The sandwiches range from $15 to $18. Coppola soothes sticker-shocked customers by noting one sandwich can satisfy two people.

The top seller is the Capitano.

Coppola named the ribeye sandwich with caramelized onions, pepper jack cheese and house sauce after his father, Salvatore Coppola, who captained a cargo ship for 30 years.

His dad died Nov. 24. Coppola spent many months going back and forth to Naples to visit his ailing father, which is why it took him a year and a half to open Toasted Amo after announcing his plans.

“He never got the chance to see my place open,” Coppola said. “But he got the concept.”

Besides the sandwiches, Coppola takes pride in Toasted Amo’s smoothie bowl selection. He sees pitaya and acai bowls as a way to attract young and health-conscious customers — a crowd likely to be frequenting next-door Starbucks, anyway. The farro salad, made with a whole-grain wheat popular in Italy, also targets that demographic.

Toasted Amo is a “real family business,” remarked Coppola’s daughter, Arianna, after topping two smoothie bowls with handfuls of fruit. His other daughters, Siria and Ivana, also work there, and cousin Andy Coppola manages the establishment so Tony Coppola can spend most of his time at his namesake restaurant.

But the end game for Coppola is to expand beyond Buffalo Township.

“Hopefully, this thing is going to take off a little bit, and after that, I want to open up in the city, Cranberry, all the busy areas,” he said.

Toasted Amo is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. It’s located at 404 Buffalo Plaza.

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