By Tom Dalton
SALEM — Diane Hamlen will never forget the phone call.
"Honey, don't get mad," said Fran Riggieri, her partner of 19 years. "We just bought a pizza shop."
Hamlen, 57, laughed as she told the story. She laughed because she was sitting inside Fran & Diane's Kitchen, 333 Lafayette St., a sandwich and pizza shop that opened a few days ago across from Salem State College.
Hamlen, a nurse, real estate agent and former health care administrator, has never run a restaurant. Nor has Riggieri, 58, who owns his own electronic and industrial manufacturing services business, Kitko International Inc.
But they know food.
"He loves to eat, (and) I'm a good cook," she said, still laughing.
Before last week, the couple were probably best known as neighborhood activists.
Since the day several years ago when a truck incredibly stormed up a hill and struck their Lafayette Street home, they have waged a campaign to slow down traffic on a dangerous stretch of Lafayette Street between Salem and Marblehead.
When he wasn't lobbying for new street signs, Riggieri apparently was peering out his car window and following the slow demise of his local pizza shop.
"Every day Fran would drive by and say, 'What the heck is going on with Niko's?'" she said.
When Riggieri learned last year that Niko's had closed, he rushed to find the landlord and sign a lease for the pizza-thin storefront. Running a restaurant, it turns out, had been a lifelong dream.
"He has always said, 'I just want a meatball window,'" Hamlen said.
Fran and Diane's is a lot more than a meatball window, though it could have used one last week when they sold 125 meatballs in the first two days.
Hamlen, who runs the business with Riggieri's son, Jay, uses her own recipes and makes almost everything from scratch. The menu includes paninis, subs, sandwiches, pasta dinners, pizzas and — of course — homemade meatballs.
The menu even reflects the couple's meatball passion. Customers can dine on either "Diane's Famous Meatballs" or the "Franwich," smashed meatballs with provolone cheese on a bulkie roll.
