By Carol Coultas,Business Writer
Espo’s Trattoria opens Tuesday, offering customers a vista with their pasta.

LEWISTON – Talk about dough.

When Bob Esposito took over the family restaurant two years ago, the 30-year-old Italian eatery in Portland grossed $380,000 in sales.

The next year, it grossed $1.4 million, spurring the new entrepreneur to open a second restaurant on Allen Avenue in that city. This year, he expects sales of $2.9 million.

“That’s a lot of growth in two years,” said Esposito with a smile.

And there’s more in sight. Esposito will open the family’s third restaurant Tuesday in what was once the old Central Maine Power building at Island Point. This third Espo’s Trattoria will offer diners an assortment of seafood, steak, chicken and veal dishes, as well as its Italian specialties and freshly made pizza.

“It’s all about the quality of the food and the type of service,” said Esposito.

He takes pride in both. Esposito said everything is prepared from fresh – not frozen – ingredients for his entrees. His chicken Parmesan is made with generous portions of fresh chicken cutlets – not the frozen patties that so often appear in corporate restaurant meals. His pizza dough is hand-tossed and made fresh every day.

“Everything is made in my kitchen,” he said. “It’s all made from scratch.”

And he’s bringing in experienced staff from his other two locations to help train the Lewiston crew so that they will deliver the same quality of service his restaurants are known for.

“I tell them, just take care of the customer – you’ll never have to worry about the product,” he said.

Esposito said Lewiston was an easy pick for his first expansion outside Portland. He said the city’s population attracted him initially. Then his market study showed some good local restaurants, but not enough, and none exactly like Espo’s.

Plus the location is spectacular. A deck runs along the river-view side of the restaurant for al fresco dining, and patrons inside can see the Great Falls and Androscoggin River from several locations.

The restaurant has seating for about 80 people and another 30 are welcome in the restaurant’s martini bar. Almost 60 parking spaces next to the restaurant make access easy.

Red oak woodwork and crown molding coupled with handsome tiled floors give the restaurant a classy yet casual feel. An open kitchen allows for easy conversation between the chefs and the patrons – another signature of Esposito’s restaurants.

Esposito said he knew for certain he’d made the right decision to locate in Lewiston when he ran into a snafu during construction. Apparently he needed a gas main larger than the existing one. He called the city, which had three staffers there within a half-hour to trouble-shoot the problem with him.

When he ran into a construction dilemma in Portland, “it took them a week just to call me back,” he said.

Plus, Lewiston city staff offered him a $125,000 loan at 3 percent interest to help offset some of the costs of the rehab work.

“Their attitude was, Here’s how we can help,'” said Esposito.

Renovation for the 3,600-square-foot restaurant offered other surprises. When workers began knocking down walls, they came across CMP’s old safe – a room-size vault with 18-inch concrete walls. After many hours of chiseling, Esposito decided it was simpler to convert the safe into a walk-in cooler.

“Renovations are always an ambitious undertaking,” he said, again with a smile.

Although the restaurant is poised to open Tuesday, Esposito isn’t taking a break. He’s already interested in converting 1,800 square feet of adjacent office space into banquet facilities.

And talk of new restaurants opening nearby doesn’t cow him one bit.

“I welcome competition,” he said confidently. In fact, he recently had dinner at Lewiston’s newest restaurant, Fish Bones.

“It was terrific.”