How has a century in the American South changed the familys approach to Italian cuisine?
You know, it’s interesting. When my grandfather had his restaurant, his name was Italian, and that’s about it. I think the menu had spaghetti and meatballs, maybe one or two pasta dishes, and not much else in the way of Italian food. The rest was all Southern-style vegetables, fried chicken, fried catfish, and other traditional Southern foods. I’d say it was American and Italian. For people in the Delta, Italian food meant pasta, and pasta meant spaghetti. They hadn’t heard of veal, or manicotti, or cannelloni. The first time I ever served spinach pasta in my restaurant somebody sent it back because they saw the green noodles and thought their food was spoiled. But eventually, as more people moved to Memphis from the north and other places, there started to be more of a demand for the kind of food that we knew and the kind of food that we ate but couldn’t sell. Today, I have some steaks and seafood on the menu, but the rest is Italian. Having grown up in the business, why did you wait
