Longtime Rainier Valley bakery-owner Remo Borracchini is up to his eyeballs in goodies, at the business that's been in the area for 100 years. In 2021, the business closed for good.
KURT SMITH/PI"I figured it out once, on a busy day. More than 13,000 people were setting down to eat our weddings cakes that night. Not bad, ehh?"
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That's what Remo Borracchini told Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Jon Hahn in 1981, when he ran the family bakery. Now, after almost 100 years, the South Seattle landmark Borracchini's Bakery & Mediterranean Market will no longer be pumping out cakes for birthday and wedding guests. It's another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on businesses.
The family wrote the announcement on the bakery's Facebook:
"As you know, Remo Borracchini's Bakery is known for our wonderful cakes and because of this, we are in the party business. The problem with that is no one has been gathering over this past year to have those parties.
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"Needless to say, it was devastating to our business. After considering our options, we've made a very difficult decision to remain closed permanently.
"A huge thank you to you, our devoted customers and loyal crew who are all like our extended family. You have all given us a lifetime of memories that will never be forgotten."
Borracchini's Bakery started as a basement bakery in the same building that housed the Oberto sausage factory, Borracchini told the P-I in 1981. His parents raised him and his four siblings while baking and selling French bread door-to-door.
They moved to the current location in 1939, his dad calling himself the "International French Bakery." Eventually, Borracchini said when he ran the bakery he called it an Italian bakery making Italian bread.
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"A nice lady customer was at the counter one day and asked: 'What's the difference between Italian bread and French bread?' And I said: 'Lady, an Italian baked this bread!'"
Since then the place has become famous for custom-decorated cakes and authentic Italian food items. In 1981, the bakery was making 250 cakes a day.
At one point part of a bustling Italian population in the Rainier Valley neighborhood, it's now another Seattle favorite gone too soon.