“We were looking for a place,” said Hafiz Haidari about a fall day in 2003. “I had never been to Moraga before, and it was a gloomy, dark, rainy day. The space was not in good shape. I told my partners this wasn’t going to work.”
But long-time Orinda resident Jack Flanagan – who passed away last August – convinced Haidari that he could turn the former French spot, Chez Maurice, into the restaurant he wanted to run.
Twenty-three years later, Amoroma is a Lamorinda tradition. Haidari and Chef Alfonzo Gonzalez have been there all along, making pasta from scratch every day and building a devoted clientele…