Silvia (from left) Giuseppe and Giovanna Fausto in their eatery. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post)

There are no customers here, only family.

There’s family crowded into the five little tables at the Cosi Duci bakery and cafe, waiting to see what Mama has cooked for lunch. There’s family, like the woman who pops in on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, toting an ancient VHS she can’t wait to share, or the folks who come in for the exquisite espresso, or to watch Italian TV news, or chat in Italian. There’s family that comes for Mama.

Mama Giovanna Fausto, the woman bustling out of the kitchen with steaming cups of split pea soup, is everybody’s mama. She dotes on you, pats your back when she asks how you’re doing, clucks over you like a loving mother hen.

If she treats you like family, it’s because her story begins and ends with family.

It was family that helped her through some of her darkest days, when her son Giuseppe was diagnosed with a potentially crippling disease at age 26.

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To hear Mama Giovanna tell the story, it was a time when the world as she knew it turned upside down. The diagnosis of multiple sclerosis five years ago devastated the family.

“It was very, very hard,” Mama says, tearing up. “I remember I couldn’t stop crying. If I even think of it now, I cry.”

But the hardship also filled her with a new sense of purpose, one that would re-direct her life – and spark a new business.

In hopes of finding a cure for her son’s disease, Mama Giovanna, the old-school Italian cook from a small Sicilian town, became a baker of gluten-free products.

The family’s Cosi Duci (Sweet Things) bakery in Boca Raton stands as a testament to Mama’s devotion to family and food.

The family’s story begins a world away from East Boca, in the Sicilian coastal town of Castellammare del Golfo, birthplace of the Fausto clan – Mama Giovanna, her daughters Silvia and Marilena, and son Giuseppe.

“We grew up in a small town in Sicily where we knew everyone,” remembers Silvia, who owns the four-year-old bakery café, which also sells regular baked goods.

“Coming to the United States where nobody knew you is a culture shock.”

Treats Galore: Delicious gluten-free desserts are sold at Cosi Duci in Boca Raton. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post).

The family settled in Boca Raton, where Mama opened a restaurant she called Mama Giovanna. She ran the place for 13 years and sold it in 2003. But she missed it. During the year she took off to stay at home, Mama cooked up a storm.

“We all gained weight, so we told her, ‘You need to go get a job!’ ” Silvia says. “She would cook for 30 people at home, and there was only four or five of us.”

Her mother (and best friend) listened to her, taking a job working at Whole Foods. Still, she couldn’t stop baking at home and kept bringing in her biscotti to share with co-workers.

“That’s who she is; she likes to share food,” says Silvia, who was working as a Web designer for the Sun-Sentinel at the time.

The delicious biscotti caught the nose of the managers, who asked if she could produce much more of it for Whole Foods.

They dove into the project. Eventually, Silvia quit her job at the paper to devote more time to the family biscotti business. It was no easy feat mass-producing the baked goods, but the Fausto family geared up for greatness. Parallel to this exciting new enterprise, a sad story unfolded in the Fausto home. Mama’s only son was sick.

It had started months earlier, before Mama had closed the restaurant. Giuseppe dropped the tongs while serving spaghetti. Numbness spread through his hands and eventually his legs. Exhaustion and fatigue took their toll.

At first, everyone thought he had carpal tunnel from playing too much Grand Theft Auto. But that didn’t explain the numbness in his legs or the loss of vision he experienced.

“You don’t think about it being MS. You just think you’re tired,” says Giuseppe, now 33.

Those days were filled with confusion, worry and many tears. Years later, Giuseppe is introspective, practical, optimistic and good-natured about his diagnosis. “There’s a lot of people that are much worse off than I am,” he says.

Mama’s mission

Mama Giovanna is a doer. She just had to figure out what to do to help her sick son. She started reading more and more about diets for those with MS and learned that going gluten-free could help her son. Gluten is a type of protein found in most breads, pastas and cereals – so eliminating gluten from the Italian diet is a tricky thing.

“For us as Italians, it’s so hard. We love pasta. We love bread. It’s part of our daily routine,” Silvia says.

To Giuseppe, the gluten-free products on the market tasted “like cardboard.” So Mama started developing her own gluten-free recipes: gluten-free tiramisu, gluten-free ricotta cheesecake, gluten-free cupcakes, gluten-free cookies. By using rice flour or almond flour – and with lots and lots of tweaking – she was able to take her old Sicilian recipes and convert them to gluten-free.

“I started trying and trying,” Mama remembers.

And her son noticed a difference. Giuseppe, who at one point couldn’t walk, couldn’t go up stairs, couldn’t hold a pen or even get out of bed, got remarkably better. Now, he’s a mall-walker – and an integral part of the bakery cafe. He’s lost more than 120 pounds, too.

When he goes gluten-free, says Giuseppe, his energy and strength are up and his fatigue is decreased.

“You definitely see a huge difference,” he says.

Now the Fausto family has two missions: baking biscotti for Whole Foods and making gluten-free products for other families who need it. The gluten-free mission has expanded well beyond Giuseppe now – it also reaches customers who suffer from celiac disease and others with wheat allergies. And a portion of the proceeds goes to MS research.

The Faustos recently baked one customer a gluten-free birthday cake – it was the first birthday cake the woman had had in 17 years. She cried when she saw it.

As the family struggled to get the little bakery off the ground, they started offering lunch as a way to get through the tight first year.

“It was a little tough at first. We started serving lunch because we had to pay the bills,” Silvia says.

There is no menu, no choices, no substitutions. (You’re family here, remember?) There’s just whatever Mama wants to make you today, take it or leave it.

“You serve what you like. You say, ‘Eat this!’ ” Mama says, delighted in the simplicity of their current lunch, especially compared to the all-consuming restaurant of her previous life.

“People sit down and say, ‘don’t tell me, just feed me,’ ” Silvia says. “People love it.”

For $10, you get a soup, bread, foccacia and two courses.

“People have seen us grow, and they just became part of our family,” Silvia says. “We don’t have a big family here. It’s just us, so it’s nice to have our customers become our family.”

Janelle Sloan of Boynton Beach brings her niece Holly, who suffers from celiac and diabetes, to the cafe and bakery. Holly couldn’t believe she had real (gluten-free) bread she could dip into her soup. She loves it so much she’s considering attending FAU, just so she can eat at Cosi Duci.

On a recent Tuesday, the café is buzzing with Italians. The room glows under a bright chandelier, donated by a customer. Italian news plays on the television, old Italian men eagerly wait for their meatballs. Wannabe Italians soak it in, soak up the family and the warmth and the love.

The day’s lunch offerings include quinoa with cranberries and almonds (gluten-free), two big meatballs, pasta with zucchini, split pea soup and a plate of two types of bread.

In Mama’s house, you want nothing more than to make her proud – so you try your best to polish off the generous portions she sets before you. (An impossible task sometimes.)

Afterward, she’ll come over to study your progress and ask:

“Are you ready for dessert?”

GLUTEN-FREE HORSESHOE

Recipe by Mama Giovanna Fausto

1/2 cup honey

3 egg whites

2 1/2 cups almond flour

1 handful of blanched almonds

Mix egg whites with honey, then add the almond flour until you get a good consistency. Shape like horseshoes. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 350º for 15 minutes.

COSI DUCI

Aside from the gluten-free biscotti, the bakery specializes in Italian fig cookies, lemon drop cookies, hazelnut cookies and sesame seed cookies.

THE BAKERY CAFE: 141 N.W. 20th St., Suite B21, (Plum Park), Boca Raton. Phone: (561) 393-1201. Directions, invite friends, more.

THE PRODUCTS: Available at Whole Foods in Florida, Milam’s Markets in South Florida, Nordstrom e-Bars nationwide.