Retro-Italian restaurants 'feel like home.'

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 22, 1996 by Carolyn Walkup

At first glance, it's hard to fathom why the many retro, Southern Italian-American restaurants are flourishing in this modern era of trendy, eclectic concepts.

There is little, if anything, contemporary about the food or the atmosphere. Deliberately designed to look old, these restaurants evoke nostalgia for simpler, friendlier eras.

The design and mood of these restaurants is remarkably similar. It looks as if all the designers visited Carmine's in New York before sitting down at the drawing board. Cut from the same mold are vintage elements of earlier decades, such as dark wood paneling, light fixtures from the 1920s-1940s, old black-and-white family portraits and checkered tablecloths.

All of these restaurants have large, open dining rooms designed for high noise levels. However, tables are spaced far enough apart so that conversations from other tables usually can't be overheard without effort.

Some of the restaurants that fit this niche are Italianni's, a nine-unit concept owned by the TGI Friday's division of Minneapolis-based Carlson Cos.; Maggiano's Little Italy, a three-unit chain founded by Richard Melman's Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises and now a subsidiary of Brinker International; Vinny's, a two-unit success poised for growth, owned by Carlucci Hospitality Group; and Buca, a growing, three-unit division of Parasole Restaurant Holdings in Minneapolis.

"Food is considered a celebration of life in Italy that should be shared with others," explains Tony Santarelli, vice president of specialty concepts for TGI Friday's. Serving food on platters, family-style, is an integral part of Italianni's and similar concepts.

Menus are remarkably alike, and feature such ubiquitous, hearty Southern Italian comfort foods as minestrone, pepperoni pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, chicken Parmesan with marinara sauce and various veal and steak choices. Unlike trendier restaurants that pride themselves on original dishes and unusual ingredient combinations, these eateries seldom depart from somebody's grandmother's recipes.

Portion sizes are extremely large. At Vinny's the menu lists most dishes as available in two sizes: regular and humongous. Doggie bags are the norm, eagerly requested by patrons who either don't like to cook or don't have time to cook at home.

Except for food snobs or those who bemoan the fact that many of the dishes are more American than Italian, almost everyone seems to enjoy going to these places. Maggiano's can substantiate this popularity with approximate annual sales totals of $8 million.

A look around at the clientele reveals a broad cross-section of society: families with young children, romantic couples on dates, blue-collar workers on lunch breaks, businessmen in suits discussing the stock market, senior citizens, etc.

Everyone seems to be having a good time, even people dining alone, as they sometimes do at those restaurants located in or near shopping malls. The upbeat and homey atmosphere seems to make everyone comfortable.

Restaurants like these have captured the essence of why people go out to eat. Dining out is usually a social occasion, where the food is not the main point. Rather, enjoying the company of family, friends or business associates or just of the wait staff is the primary reason for being there.

Restaurateurs like Richard Melman and Joe Carlucci intuitively understand that fact. They built these establishments as places where people can get together as comfortably as they used to do in their homes in the days when the whole family ate meals together regularly. These days, when many new homes and apartments don't even have separate dining rooms, restaurants have become the dining rooms or kitchen tables of America.

It's fitting that these restaurants have Italian roots, since sharing meals around the family table is such an integral part of Italian life. As Marcella Hazan wrote in "The Classic Italian Cookbook," "There probably has been no influence, not even religion, so effective in creating a rich family life, in maintaining a civilized link between the generations, as the daily sharing of a common joy."

As human interaction becomes more rare in today's computerized society, getting together over a meal may be the only time of day when people talk to each other in person. Look for even more restaurants like these to open everywhere as people seek out places that feel like home.