Maurizio Cutrignelli lives and breathes hospitality in his latest venture, Piccolo.

On his days off, Mondays and Tuesdays, Maurizio Cutrignelli spends time in his backyard garden tending to tomatoes, basil, chickens and bees. It helps that he lives in a warm, sunny microclimate, in San Martin. It also helps that he thinks tomatoes have stories to tell.

“You may have a good steak, but if the person brings it to you and just drops it – well,” he says, pausing for effect as he explains his philosophy of hospitality. “If you have a nice piece of bread and a nice tomato and they tell you the story about it, people are going to remember the tomato more.”

Tomatoes have stories, and so does Cutrignelli. He loves to talk, and he talks with his hands. As one of his landlords at the breakwater marina, at the foot of the Coast Guard Pier in Monterey, puts it: “He looks like he’s making your dinner in front of you as he’s explaining it,” Paul Bruno says.

Talking, naturally, is also part of Cutrignelli’s philosophy of hospitality. “We have well-mannered people come in, and also not well-mannered,” he says. “One of my favorite parts of the restaurant business, I have to confess, is the not well-mannered one. They come in and I don’t know why they behave that way; maybe they were in a car crash. The goal is to turn that person around. They can become one of your best customers, because nobody ever made them feel that way.”

But the talker/listener/gardener is, at his core, a chef. He grew up in the Puglia region of southern Italy, eating a lot of seafood and fresh ingredients. He studied hospitality and worked in Italy, Holland, Germany then moved to the U.S. at the invitation of a friend at 25, in 1993. He opened Maurizio’s (still around) in Morgan Hill in 1996. And on Oct. 3, 2024 – 31 years to the day he arrived in this country – he opened his latest project, an elevated deli with laden Italian sandwiches.

At Piccolo, Cutrignelli grabs a fistful of fresh basil (from the yard) and emphasizes there is no mayo or ketchup – the secret ingredient is giardiniera, a spread of coarsely chopped peppers, onion, capers, carrots, cauliflower and olive oil. He heaps slices of prosciutto tall on a baguette and only reluctantly smushes it down with the top piece of bread – the meat, cured for 24 months in Italy, needs to express itself, he says.

This might all sound pretentious if delivered in a certain way, but Cutrignelli creates an atmosphere that’s anything but. A customer comes in just before closing time at 5:30pm and he runs to the counter to take their order, calling out, “Hi, ciao, welcome, buongiorno!” Piccolo is counter service for a menu featuring sandwiches, clam chowder, beer and wine; there’s not a full kitchen, just a convection oven and panini presses. A coffee bar is coming in July, after he returns from a trip to Italy. There’s also a grab-and-go section with imports from Italy like pasta and Umbrian lentils, as well as American candy bars and Chapstick.

It’s all simpler and more affordable than his upstairs restaurant, Osteria al Mare, which he opened in 2018. When the downstairs space opened – delayed slightly due to of the closure of San Carlos Beach for sea lions – he envisioned a more casual concept. “Some people don’t want to go to the restaurant, they feel like they have to spend enough money to not look silly,” Cutrignelli says. “Here it doesn’t matter, it’s about keeping people around.”

To that end, Piccolo launched a live music series on May 31, and will continue offering free live music starting at 6pm through the summer. Cutrignelli encourages people to come with blankets and layers – but the wind usually dies down by evening, he notes – to enjoy the harbor view and the sunset.

In an area that thrives on seasonal tourism, he sees locals as his core business, the people who can sustain his restaurants year-round. “That’s why Osteria has been successful,” he says, then seems to remember that yes, it is still about the food: “It’s also that we have scallops over porcini and truffle ravioli.”

PICCOLO and OSTERIA AL MARE are on the Coast Guard Pier, 32 Cannery Row, Monterey. Live music happens from 6-9pm on Saturdays through the summer. 718-8520, piccolopaninigrill.com.