As her first trip to Italy was ending, Shirley Dunavant was in tears. She walked the streets of Valenza where her father had grown up before he moved to Memphis. She met relatives for the first time. She was amazed by the lush, green countryside.

Back in Memphis, she suggested an idea to her daughter, Kathey Cianciola. What if they started their own business — one that celebrated the foods of their ancestral country? They could call it “Valenza.”

“It was such a beautiful town, there was only one thing to name it,” Dunavant says.

For the last five years, the two have been partners in Valenza Pasta, currently located on Madison in a space they share with a wedding-cake decorator.

It’s Cianciola’s first business. She had been working as a typesetter. “The biggest challenge is paying the rent,” Cianciola says. “It’s scary, but it’s been fun. We’ve met a lot of nice chefs. You mostly think of snobby chefs, but we haven’t run into any.”

Dunavant’s been a music teacher, a decorator, and an artist, so she was a bit more familiar with the pros and cons of signing her own paycheck. They both look to Dunavant’s father, Louis Ronza, as an example. He was 16 when he came to Memphis from Italy. In a few years, he owned a grocery store at Walker and Greenwood, which he ran from 1932 to 1965. The family lived next door.

“He got up at 4 a.m. and would get home at 7 p.m.,” says Dunavant. “He liked to work.” Mother and daugther inherited Ronza’s work ethic. When creating the pasta for Valenza, the two decided they wouldn’t offer any ordinary noodle.

Their fettuccine, linguine, and angel-hair pastas come in 33 flavors and colors — so far. The two are often trying new varieties, including lemon chive, spicy pumpkin, raspberry, wheat germ, and orange sage. Some pastas — the green beer one for St. Patrick’s Day, for example — are seasonal.

The eight-ounce packages of the dry pasta are $2.50 each. The pasta flavored with squid ink is more. Ravioli dishes range in price from $7.50 to $9 per pound. They also sell entrées, including the orange pasta with orange sauce, pork barbecue ravioli, and vegetarian meals. None of the dishes contains preservatives.

“That is why our food costs a little more. We put quality in them,” Dunavant says.

Their best sellers are the meat ravioli and toasted ravioli, and they make about 60 pounds of each per week. Currently, Valenza’s pasta is sold at their retail location in Midtown and at Miss Cordelia’s grocery on Mud Island. Restaurants such as Bluefin, Theresa’s Italian Café, Robilio’s Side Car, and Tucker’s also purchase the pasta. Many courier services do not ship food, so, says Dunavant, “we close early on Friday to make the deliveries, then we go home to have a cocktail.”

Because customers have complained that their location in the Madison/Cleveland area is hard to find (the panhandlers and the prostitutes don’t help much either), Dunavant and Cianciola have found a new location on McLean and are planning to move at the end of next month. They also want to start a Web site, so they can begin shipping the dried pasta to businesses and individuals.

One thing that is not in the cards, now or ever, is turning Valenza Pasta into a restaurant.

“I like to play a little,” says Dunavant. “You are always working in a restaurant.”

It’s a Saturday afternoon in Confederate Park, and Chester Claxton is witness to something far less contentious than rallies over park names.

Claxton is passing by when he notices a group gathered in the park. The volunteer organization Food Not Bombs has set up a table and is serving food to all comers. “You have a special spirit I could feel when I came up,” he says to members of the group. “You are bringing civilization back where it belongs.”

Food Not Bombs is a worldwide volunteer movement that provides vegetarian meals to the hungry and to protesters. It was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after an antinuclear protest in May 1980.

The Mid-South chapter was formed in 2002 and lasted about a year. In January 2005, the group came together again. This time they hope to stay. Food Not Bombs serves lunch on Saturdays around 2 p.m. in Confederate Park and sometimes serves meals at the Orange Mound Community Gardens. They also provide food to those involved in community protests.

Around 11 a.m. every Saturday, the volunteers — mostly in their teens and early 20s — arrive at the kitchen of Galloway United Methodist Church.

The meals are created from food donations by local businesses. A bruised plum won’t sell in a store but will taste fine in a fruit salad. The potato chips may be past the sell-by date but aren’t ready for the dumpster.

Today, the volunteers settle on a potato dish, fruit salad, Mexican rice, cherries (a no-brainer since they have 22 containers of cherries), a corn and green-bean dish, and garlic bread. All of the meals are vegan, to keep the risk of food spoilage to a minimum.

At Confederate Park, the temperature is 95 degrees. An occasional, slight breeze off the river makes things a bit more tolerable for the seven or so people sitting around the park. A minivan pulls up, and group members unload the food and tables and set them up in a shady spot.

A visitor to the park gets a plate for herself and a friend. “I am glad they are doing this,” she says. This is the second time she had eaten with Food Not Bombs.

Politics has always been a part of Food Not Bombs. The group supports an end to nuclear power — for both peacetime and war use. They want the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel out of Palestine. They also support open borders and environmental causes. However, food delivery is noticeably nonpolitical.

“We don’t make them sit through anything in order to get fed,” says Food Not Bombs member Amanda Kohr. They may talk about social and political issues, but the idea here is to respect all world views.

But not all are happy. One man says, “You gonna eat your rice and your food, but they ain’t gonna give you a place to stay tonight.” Others say the food distribution encourages panhandlers and the homeless to gather downtown.

Claxton, a carpenter from Arkansas working in Memphis, does not fit the stereotype of someone looking for a free meal. He is drawn to the park because he admires the members of Food Not Bombs.

“They are reaching out where help is needed,” Claxton says. “They are looking for people out of their own comfort zone.” He says the connection between the people gathered today in Confederate Park is a refreshing change in a community overwhelmed with crime and other problems.

“This is a necessity,” Claxton says. “I thank God.”

On a recent Friday night during happy hour at Molly’s La Casita, 2006 Madison, a friendly raccoon was greeting visitors in the back parking lot. Meanwhile, a woman in a business suit was walking through the lot, headed for dinner. She elected to take the front door to avoid the animal, however genial.

The point: It takes all kinds to make up a good happy hour, and those kinds — singles, couples, groups, families, suits, slackers, and raccoons — seem to fit right in at Molly’s.

Molly’s celebrated its 30th anniversay last month. Founder Molly Gonzales opened her first casita in Memphis at 1910 Lamar and then partnered with now-owner Robert Chapman to move to the present location in 1982. Gonzales died in 1997 at age 95.

When happy hour starts at 4 p.m., there are just a handful of customers. But by 6 p.m., the place is nearly filled. At the bar there are conversations about work and conversations about travel. Two patrons are discussing a washing machine they either have or wish they did. No one, however, appears to be meeting each other for the first time.

“It sounds cheesy, but this is their Cheers, where everybody knows your name,” says bartender/manager Conan Robbins, who has worked at Molly’s for 12 years. When one regular walks in, Robbins starts pouring a strawberry margarita and then puts in a request for chicken enchiladas — the regular’s usual. As for the Cheers thing, Robbins says he knows about 100 customers by name.

And everybody knows Phil Brown. In fact, says general manager Kelly Johnson, “If he’s not here, he better tell us he’s out of town, or we worry.” Brown shows up almost every day and has been for about 15 years. “Camaraderie” is how he sums up the appeal of Molly’s happy hour.

Caribbean Queen Bee (she did not want to give her name) is dressed in bright red and is sitting at the corner of the bar. She’s another 15-year veteran of happy hour. She comes for the tamales, shrimp, and hot wings, she says, and, of course, for the company of the staff and other regulars.

At one of the tables, Reggie Whitney is sitting with three friends. He remembers when he first became a regular — yep, 15 years ago. “That’s when we came into the knowledge of Molly’s margaritas,” he says.

But it is more than margaritas and tacos at Molly’s. Staff and customers go beyond the standard business relationship. Manager Johnson says it is not unusual for the customers and staff to send each other Christmas cards and to invite each other to parties. Robbins says many meet up to go to baseball games, and he once went on a trip to Europe with some of his customers. Patron Gene Lee invited the staff to see him play guitar with his band at Printer’s Alley a couple years ago. About nine of the staff showed up.

The regulars have memories good and bad. Brown remembers the day when an intoxicated woman broke a glass and cut her hand. She refused to let anyone help her and then tried to attack the employees. She was gone before the police arrived. On Halloween night 2003, Beckii Lee, Gene’s wife, helped bartender Robbins get into his Joan Crawford/Mommie Dearest costume. “He had a cocktail in one hand and a wire hanger in the other,” she recalls.

When Gene started coming to Molly’s in the mid-’80s, he would bring a book to read during happy hour. But not anymore. “The thing turned into a party,” he says.

Others regulars say they have vivid memories too, but those stories aren’t fit to print. •

Molly’s, 2006 Madison (726-1873). Happy hour is 4 to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Margaritas are $4; well drinks are 75 cents off.

“Hurry hurry hurry,” Camy Archer says. “Let’s get ourselves ready for the first order.”

Archer, owner of the delivery restaurant Camy’s, is watching her day manager Shawn Eads as he works on four pizzas. This is the first order of the day in what will be a 14-hour shift for Archer. The remaining 10 hours, Archer will be on call.

It’s this vigilance that led Archer to open Camy’s and to keep it open. For the past 12 years, Camy’s has delivered food throughout Midtown and downtown. It’s not fast food but sturdy American staples — lasagna, steak dinners, sub sandwiches, pizzas, salads, and desserts.

Archer grew up in Holly Grove, Arkansas, where her father owned a gas station. She and her brother and sister “got to play ball and play with our friends,” she says, “but we all had a 20-minute chore.” Hers was counting the money from the register and the vending machines. She fondly remembers the value of customers to her parents and the give-and-take of owning a business in a small town. It was the sort of place where the doors were left unlocked so the grocery delivery boy could place perishables in the refrigerator after hours.

In 1970, after her junior year in high school, Archer moved to Memphis to pursue a career as a musician. She played guitar and sang both Top 40 and country in different venues throughout the Mid-South. But the travel got old, and in 1987, she started driving for Domino’s Pizza, “deciding what I was going to do,” she says. She eventually began working in Domino’s marketing department, drumming up new business in the Memphis area.

“Do you know a place that delivers anything besides pizza?” she often heard. She took note and then took off on her own.

In November 1992, at age 40, she opened Camy’s. Domino’s was her only competition, but six months later, Pizza Hut began delivering, followed by Papa John’s and Steak Out. She was overwhelmed by the customer response. On day one, she had three employees; the next day, five. Currently, there are 26.

Many of Archer’s employees are students cooking or driving their way on to unrelated futures. Older drivers are earning supplemental incomes.

Working at Camy’s does mean long hours. The business is closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and after the July 2003 wind storm closed Camy’s for a few days, employees used the downtime to paint the store. But, she says, someone once told her, “If you are in a bad mood when you are making that food, it will come out in that food,” so she tries to take it easy on her employees. Managers work no more than 45 hours per week, and if someone is having a bad day, she will let them go home. When the roads are icy, she would rather close than put her drivers in danger. She also tells drivers not to deliver if they are in a situation where they do not feel safe.

Nor will Archer put her drivers in a situation where they’ll not be on time. Students at Rhodes College, University of Tennessee-Memphis, and Christian Brothers University are a great source of business, but she resists the temptation to expand to the much larger University of Memphis campus. Timeliness of delivery would suffer and so would Camy’s reputation.

As for the future, Archer is looking east. The growth areas of Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Cordova are too far from her Midtown location for delivery, so she is considering selling franchises. She also did a survey among her customers to see what they’d like on the menu.

The survey results have provided Archer with something new to be vigilant about: hot wings, which were the most requested menu addition.

“We are trying to find the finest hot wings in the world,” she says. n

Camy’s, 3 S. Barksdale, 725-1667

PHOTO BY DEVIN GREANEY

FOOD NEWS

by Sonia Alexander Hill

Round 1 is a sports bar with a twist.

The concept was to combine sports with upscale dining, says partner Orlando Steward. The result is a contemporary-casual décor with plasma televisions, so patrons can catch the game while enjoying grilled salmon or lobster tail. Also on the menu are fried gator bites.

“There’s a story to the gator bites,” says Chef Damien Ward. “I used to own an alligator, and it bit the tip of my finger off, so now I take any chance I get to cook an alligator tail.”

Although Ward was born in Memphis, he traveled extensively while his father was in the military and later during his own military stint. Ward learned to cook in restaurants all over the world.

“I took a chef’s apprenticeship in what was then Yorktown, Yugoslavia. I took jobs everywhere just to learn, not for money, because food is my passion, and to fulfill your passion you have to go to the source,” Ward says.

For Ward, cooking is a family thing. Two of his brothers are also professional chefs, and his uncle was on the culinary staff at the White House during the Johnson administration.

“For me, a black man coming up in the 1960s, it was a big deal to know that your uncle worked in the White House,” he says.

Ward says that the most important aspect of the Round 1 menu is that every item is an original recipe he created.

The restaurant opened February 4th at 6642 Winchester. The hours are 11 a.m. to midnight throughout the week and until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a limited menu after midnight.

After a long day shopping in Hernando’s Historic Town Square, take a seat in the Silver Chair, which opened February 10th. Will Rives, the former manager of the Daily Grind in downtown Memphis, decided to venture on his own with this deli-style café and coffee shop.

Rives named his restaurant for the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, written by C.S. Lewis. “In the book the main character is under the spell of a witch, except for one hour a night when he is himself. But the witch straps him to a silver chair during those times, so the only time he can be himself is in the silver chair,” Rives explains.

Rives, 25, moved to Hernando two years ago to get married. His wife, Whitley, is his business partner as well as the announcer and public-relations representative for the Memphis RiverKings. Together, the couple spent two months renovating the new restaurant. Modern accents of blues and greens and orange and yellows offset 100-year-old brick columns to give the café a fresh and chic feel.

Rives, with the help of manager and friend Melissa Hill, operates the gourmet coffee bar and serves up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The menu features hot and cold sandwiches on an assortment of breads, pitas with hummus, soups, and salads.

Rives says that he plans to offer deliveries very soon and would like to open additional locations in DeSoto County. The café is located at 2476 Memphis Street and is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Want to prepare 12 gourmet entrEes each month without having to shop, chop, or even clean up — all in less than two hours? That’s the concept behind Super Suppers, a Dallas-based franchise that opened February 15th at 4730 Poplar, #3 (763-1993).

Super Suppers was developed by Judie Byrd, founder of the Culinary School of Fort Worth. The idea is that with the hectic pace of today’s families, it is difficult to find time to prepare a complete meal. So Super Suppers does all of the

“Hurry hurry hurry,” Camy Archer says. “Let’s get ourselves ready for the first order.”

Archer, owner of the delivery restaurant Camy’s, is watching her day manager Shawn Eads as he works on four pizzas. This is the first order of the day in what will be a 14-hour shift for Archer. The remaining 10 hours, Archer will be on call.

It’s this vigilance that led Archer to open Camy’s and to keep it open. For the past 12 years, Camy’s has delivered food throughout Midtown and downtown. It’s not fast food but sturdy American staples — lasagna, steak dinners, sub sandwiches, pizzas, salads, and desserts.

Archer grew up in Holly Grove, Arkansas, where her father owned a gas station. She and her brother and sister “got to play ball and play with our friends,” she says, “but we all had a 20-minute chore.” Hers was counting the money from the register and the vending machines. She fondly remembers the value of customers to her parents and the give-and-take of owning a business in a small town. It was the sort of place where the doors were left unlocked so the grocery delivery boy could place perishables in the refrigerator after hours.

In 1970, after her junior year in high school, Archer moved to Memphis to pursue a career as a musician. She played guitar and sang both Top 40 and country in different venues throughout the Mid-South. But the travel got old, and in 1987, she started driving for Domino’s Pizza, “deciding what I was going to do,” she says. She eventually began working in Domino’s marketing department, drumming up new business in the Memphis area.

“Do you know a place that delivers anything besides pizza?” she often heard. She took note and then took off on her own.

In November 1992, at age 40, she opened Camy’s. Domino’s was her only competition, but six months later, Pizza Hut began delivering, followed by Papa John’s and Steak Out. She was overwhelmed by the customer response. On day one, she had three employees; the next day, five. Currently, there are 26.

Many of Archer’s employees are students cooking or driving their way on to unrelated futures. Older drivers are earning supplemental incomes.

Working at Camy’s does mean long hours. The business is closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and after the July 2003 wind storm closed Camy’s for a few days, employees used the downtime to paint the store. But, she says, someone once told her, “If you are in a bad mood when you are making that food, it will come out in that food,” so she tries to take it easy on her employees. Managers work no more than 45 hours per week, and if someone is having a bad day, she will let them go home. When the roads are icy, she would rather close than put her drivers in danger. She also tells drivers not to deliver if they are in a situation where they do not feel safe.

Nor will Archer put her drivers in a situation where they’ll not be on time. Students at Rhodes College, University of Tennessee-Memphis, and Christian Brothers University are a great source of business, but she resists the temptation to expand to the much larger University of Memphis campus. Timeliness of delivery would suffer and so would Camy’s reputation.

As for the future, Archer is looking east. The growth areas of Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Cordova are too far from her Midtown location for delivery, so she is considering selling franchises. She also did a survey among her customers to see what they’d like on the menu.

The survey results have provided Archer with something new to be vigilant about: hot wings, which were the most requested menu addition.

“We are trying to find the finest hot wings in the world,” she says.

Camy’s, 3 S. Barksdale, 725-1667