Tutti Caters to Fine Food and Music Lovers

Tutti Caters to Fine Food and Music Lovers

By Leonard Shapiro

It’s been just over 50 years since Tutti Perricone first set foot in a commercial kitchen and started bussing tables part time at the old L’Auberge restaurant in Middleburg when she was 14.

“Sally Guthrie was the owner, and I really enjoyed it,” she said. “I enjoyed meeting people. I enjoyed working with the public. Just liked it right away.”

Over the next half century, that has rarely changed for this vivacious, multitalented woman who was born the youngest of six children at the old Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg. She grew up just outside of Middleburg and over the years has built a sterling reputation as the owner of one of the area’s most popular catering businesses.

After graduating from Loudoun County High School, she worked as a waitress and manager at the Red Fox for 11 years. She did the books and some cooking at the old Mosby’s Tavern and finally, with some help from her late parents, Charles and Jean Smith, opened her own restaurant and catering operation at the Back Street Cafe on Federal Street in 1986. After 25 years, she closed the popular restaurant and focused on catering starting in 2011.

These days, Back Street Catering does two or three events a week, ranging from small parties to the annual 250-guest extravaganza for members and landowners in a local hunt. She’ll do an occasional wedding, “but only for people I know.”

She’s also in the kitchen virtually every day at the Middleburg Charter Elementary, where she oversees preparing student lunches and also uses the kitchen to handle food preparation for her catering clients. Until it closed four years ago, she had a similar arrangement at Middleburg Academy.

Tutti’s culinary skills clearly come naturally. Her mother “was a great cook and a baker and would always help me do wedding cakes. In the beginning, it was pretty much trial and error. I would just try something, and it usually worked out.”

For many years, she also had some help from her late husband, Vince Perricone. a printer by trade but a man who loved to grill meat over an open fire and often tended bar at Tutti’s events until he passed away in 2019.

In addition to her culinary prowess, for years Tutti has entertained countless audiences with her magnificent voice and wideranging repertoire. She’s loved to sing most of her life and, like cooking, she’s mostly self-taught. She’s performed at every sort of event imaginable, did a boffo solo memorial concert at the Hill School in honor of Vince not long after he died and was a regular performer with the old Middleburg Players in many shows.

“I like all genres of music, but if I could pick one, it would probably be jazz,” she said. “My favorite role? The time I played Jewel in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” She was the housekeeper and I did a song called “24 Hours of Loving” that was definitely a show stopper.”

These days, there’s also no stopping Tuttti Perricone, save for a balky knee that may soon need surgery. She loves what’s she’s doing, and her clients always rave over her savory culinary creations.

“I always like to say I specialize in simple, well-prepared food,” she said. “I’d like to think I can do anything, but just don’t ask me roast a whole pig on a stick. Somebody else can do that.”