Rosemarie “Ro” Crivello, a baker and cook who was the muse for her daughter’s coffee bars, cafes and restaurant, died of heart failure July 10 at Gilchrist Center Towson. She was eight days short of her 97th birthday and had lived in Roland Park and Canton.
Born in Boston, she was the daughter of Antonio Aucella, a Naples, Italy-born immigrant who settled in Revere, Massachusetts. He founded a construction business and was its architect and builder. Her mother was Rose Carbone, an accomplished home cook.
She met her future husband, Joe Crivello, in 1948 at a wedding in Revere.
“My father had recently left the Navy and he had crashed the wedding,” said her daughter, Donna Crivello. “They married two years later.”
The couple settled in Revere and raised their two children. Mrs. Crivello also cared for her elderly parents.
“She could pull together amazing family dinners and make it seem effortless,” said her daughter, Donna. “She was a perfectionist in the kitchen and liked to work alone.”
“My mother also worked as a dentist’s assistant, and when a nearby shop — the Sit ‘n Snack — was up for sale, she wanted to buy it. My father did not like the idea. But years later, she managed a small Italian bakery in Revere.”
After daughter Donna opened her chain of coffee shops and restaurants in Baltimore, Mrs. Crivello and her husband were dining at the Mount Vernon location at Charles and Madison streets one day.
“My mother said to me, I can make ravioli better than what you have here,” her daughter said. “And soon we had perfect triangles of large raviolis she shipped to us from outside Boston.”
By 1998, Mrs. Crivello and her husband moved to Baltimore, where she began assisting her daughter in her expanding restaurant and coffee cafe business. She worked at Donna’s at the Village of Cross Keys and at the University of Maryland Medical Center on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore.
“She was a presence in the restaurants. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see if someone dropped a fork or a napkin. She knew if a diner was signaling for attention,” her daughter, Donna, said.
After her daughter became involved with Baltimore’s Cosima restaurant, Mrs. Crivello made pastries, bread and raviolis at the Falls Road, Mill No. 1 dining establishment.
Judie Golding, the owner of the restaurant Cosima, said, “Ro [Rosemarie] taught Donna the family recipes. Since we opened, we had Mama’s Meatballs and her eggplant parmesan. And Ro could come in and make her pizoles — waffle cookies for our gelato. We treasured her.”
Golding also said, “We have regular, returning customers, and Ro imparted a warm, family feeling for them. It set the tone for Cosima.”
“She herself remembered people and had a good memory for names. She definitely had the hospitality gene,” said Golding.
Mrs. Crivello also enjoyed shopping, watching episodes of the TV show “Gunsmoke” and playing poker.
A memorial Mass will be held at 11 a.m. July 26 at St. Casimir Church, 2800 O’Donnell St. in Canton.
Survivors include her daughter, Donna Crivello, of Baltimore. Her son, Paul Crivello, died in 1981. Her husband, Joe Crivello, died in 2015 and was a Boston Globe printer.
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