Linguini with scallops and shrimp at The Daily Catch.
Theo Freddura is the third of seven sons, and he says it the way other people give a job title. “Number three, Theo Santo,” he said. “We all have numbers.”
His family runs the Daily Catch, which for over forty years occupied a sliver of a storefront in Boston’s North End, the same tangle of streets and brownstones where Paul Revere kept a house and where Freddura’s father, Paul, grew up sharing a bathroom with the neighbors.
“If you didn’t like what your mama was cooking, you go next door,” Freddura said. “They’re from a different part of Sicily. Different regions, different cuisine.”
But Pasadena has long been the goal, says Theo.
“So many great restaurants here,” he said.
The Fredduras are from Siracusa, on the island’s east side, which Theo describes as carrying “some of the Greek influence coming in, some of the old Arabic influence,” as opposed to the more French-leaning west. Their signature dish came about by accident. In 1982, Paul and his brother-in-law, Anthony Lombardo, were cleaning squid by hand, as the restaurant still does, since squid is, in Theo’s words, “one of the only proteins that you don’t need a knife to actually process.” Their hands stayed inked through the shift. “One thing led to another,” Theo said. “They said, well, let’s put this into the pasta.”
The family did not just stir the ink into the sauce, in the more familiar Venetian or Sicilian rosso style. They worked it into the dough itself, turning the noodles fully black. “That’s kind of what we added to it, in our mind, in our style,” Theo said. He credits his parents’ relentless promotion, “at all the fish festivals, all the fish events, the seafood expos,” for a broader shift in American seafood habits. “Everyone had fried clams,” he said of the era. “Now you look at every menu in America and they all have fried calamari.”
Lombardo, known in the kitchen as Chef Anthony, has now relocated to Pasadena to run the stoves at the new location, the family’s first outside Massachusetts. Theo had been trying to make the move west since he first landed in Los Angeles in the early 2010s, chiefly to escape Boston winters that arrived, he said, “back to back weekends.” He described Boston regulars already finding the Pasadena address before opening day, poking their heads in the door. “Hey, I’m from Boston. I just moved here,” he recalled hearing. “I remember your restaurant. I was going there in the eighties.”
Asked if he still cooks or just manages, Theo laughed off the distinction. “I was born and raised in the kitchen,” he said. “If we’re in a jam, I need to hop in to put out some fires. I’m more than happy to jump back there.” Pressed for a favorite dish, he could not settle on one. “Monkfish is the classic you can’t find anywhere else,” he said, before circling back to the clams linguine, the halibut, the littlenecks steamed in wine, garlic, lemon, and thyme.
“I could keep going on and on and on,” he laughed.
For the record, we had shrimp and scallops in a red tomato seafood sauce, and a linguini and clams dish with white sauce. These followed a bowl of white clam chowder and Mussels Siciliano. We meant to share both dishes. That didn’t happen.
The Daily Catch is at 927 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91106 (626) 314-1205. Open Sun 11am–8pm, Mon–Tue 4pm–9pm, Wed–Thur 11am–9pm, Fri–Sat 11am–10pm. thedailycatch.com
