Sam and Paul Mincarelli were on vacation in Penne, Italy, when they learned that their favorite local restaurant had closed down after a century in business. “We jokingly talked about us reopening it,” Sam said. “We never thought that would happen.“

Now it’s happening. At the end of June, they’ll close Cafe Campli, their love letter to Italian food on Harford Road, to open their own restaurant in Penne, where they’ll serve up similar fare with a Maryland twist.

As Americans, the idea of cooking Italian food in Italy “feels a bit like culinary mansplaining,” Paul joked. But he’s confident they’ll win over Penne’s diners with some help from Sam’s recipe for crab cakes.

In recent years, Italy has been hard hit by an invasion of blue crab, and as Marylanders, Paul said, the couple is ready to make the most of it. While on vacation in Penne last summer, they filmed a video tutorial in Italian on how to pick the crustaceans.

The Mincarellis join a wave of Americans looking to move abroad amid President Donald Trump’s resurgence. Lawyers are seeing an uptick in Americans seeking second passports, particularly in the European Union, to escape unrest at home. “Americans Are Heading for the Exits” read a recent headline from The New Republic. “Go ahead and roll your eyes at those who want to emigrate amid Trump’s second term,” the story said, ”but it’s a worrying trend.”

While the Mincarellis’ plans have been in the works since before the most recent election, they initially considered keeping Cafe Campli open and renting out their home in Hampden even after leaving the U.S. That changed in November, when they decided to embark on a whole new chapter.

“We wish the life raft was a little bigger,” said Paul, whose great-grandfather, Francesco, emigrated to the U.S. from the Abruzzo region, where Penne is located, during World War I.

The couple first visited the town years ago, falling in love with the area’s cuisine over meals at Tatobbe, the restaurant they now own. They purchased a small home there, too, making annual visits.

Both eventually ditched earlier careers — Paul worked as a civilian for the Baltimore Police Department, and Sam was an architect — to open a restaurant in their hometown in 2022. Cafe Campli’s menu includes references to Abruzzese cuisine, which includes a mix of hearty meats like lamb and rabbit as well as seafood and, of course, a ton of pasta.

But its Penne’s pace of life that the Mincarellis found equally compelling. Restaurants and shops might close for no reason, a refreshing change of pace from the grind in Baltimore. “Restaurateurship in America can be infuriating,” Paul said. “Between all the sales people, between customers, between Instagram, between the arms race of vibes and all that stuff.” Italians have different priorities.

Off the radar of many tourists, Penne, high in the mountains, retains a specific and old-world charm that’s hard to pin down, said food writer Domenica Marchetti, a friend of the Mincarellis who also owns a home there. She hesitates to post photos online for fear of contributing to the town’s “Disneyfication.” She pointed to a famous sandwich shop in Florence which draws lines for blocks and blocks. “There are many other fabulous places in Florence to eat,” she said.

But there’s a fine line between untouristed and ghost town. Like many small cities in Italy, Penne has seen extensive population loss in the past few decades. “Penne needs people to invest in it and sort of champion it,” Marchetti said. (Should Cafe Campli superfans want to follow the Mincarellis, take note: the town is preparing to put a bunch of homes on the market for just 1 Euro.)

With a population of roughly 12,000, Penne is the kind of place where people know their butcher and baker by name, said friend and restaurateur Francis Cretarola, who also owns a home there. “You end up having really personal, close relationships. It becomes addictive,” said Cretarola, owner of Le Virtù, an Abbruzzo-inspired restaurant in Philadelphia.

He gets why the Mincarellis want to move there — he and his wife also hope to eventually relocate there permanently — and is impressed by their courage. Still, he said, their plan to take over a beloved old restaurant in the town’s center is “not without a considerable amount of risk.” While Cafe Campli is an homage to the region’s cuisine in Baltimore, in Italy, the Mincarellis will be tasked with serving that same food to people who know those dishes “in their bones.” He compared it to someone coming from Germany to the Inner Harbor and trying to make a crab cake.

That task may be even harder in an insular community like Penne. “The Abruzzese, like all Italians, are opinionated people, and it can take them a little while to trust you,” Marchetti said.

Paul says he and Sam are up for the challenge. The prevailing attitude about food in Penne is to center ingredients, preparing them simply and reverentially. “That’s what we try to do here,” he said, seated with Sam at a table in Cafe Campli. And they’re confident that Italians, like Marylanders, will eventually fall for crab cakes.

Their know-how around blue crabs, Cretarola said, could help the Mincarellis stand out. The blue crab invasion was initially talked about in Italy “as though the shores have been overrun by roaches,” he said, with fishermen fretting over the threat to their clamming industry. Only after a while did Italian cooks and diners start to warm up to the possibility of actually eating blue crabs as well.

For the Mincarellis, then, the road to success in Penne may be paved with Old Bay.