Elfo Grisanti’s, which opened two years ago in Southaven, Mississippi, is finally looking the way owners Alex and Kim Grisanti originally envisioned it.
A private dining room and the ladies bathroom still need to be completed, but, other than that, all the remodeling is done, Alex says.
The restaurant at 5627 Getwell Road has the same vibe as his dad’s legendary restaurant, Ronnie Grisanti & Sons, which was on Poplar Avenue near the viaduct. Elfo’s bar, which resembles a “big horseshoe,” is now completed. It has 18 chairs. “We built it like a U-shape. Like the old Ronnie’s.”
They knocked out the wall where the pizza oven was located so they could make the bar bigger, Alex says. “And we took the bay next to it, too.”
Teresa Brown and Krista Vind, who did the interior work at Elfo’s, also did interior work for Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants. Vind did the concrete work on the bar tops. “It’s actual concrete. And it’s crazy ’cause my bar shines like marble.”
Like his former restaurant in Germantown, the color scheme at the restaurant is black and gold. The walls were made to resemble “18th-century walls,” Alex says. “They did all these mosaic walls. It’s beautiful. It’s a whole different place. All the walls are concrete. They look like they’re stained. They’ve got that gray, black, and white like you see on the old buildings in Italy.”
The kitchen also got an overhaul. “I bought a new conveyor oven. Our kitchen has been totally redesigned to cook our food. I put in a new pasta boiler. I got new pasta machines to make my fried ravioli and pizza dough.”
Alex also re-hired former employees. “I got all my guys that have been with me and my dad for 20 years. They’re back with me in the kitchen.”
Elfo’s menu features beloved dishes made from Grisanti family recipes, some of which date to the first Grisanti’s restaurant, “Grisanti’s on Main,” Alex says. “In two or three months we’re going to start back all our specials. Every day a fish special, a pasta special, a beef special, and a soup of the day.”
Alex and Kim are seeing a lot of familiar faces at Elfo’s. “All our old customers are eating with me. They are realizing they live in Germantown, and it takes them no longer to drive to Mississippi than it would Downtown.”
And locals are discovering what a Grisanti’s restaurant is like. “These people have never experienced anything like it. Now they’re loading up down here. Oh, my gosh. They call it ‘Cheers’ now.”
Alex and Kim also relocated to Southaven. But Alex remembers what it was like when he opened the restaurant. “It was like the unknown. I didn’t know anything about Southaven. I didn’t know anything about the area where we were.” But, he says, “It’s just been a blessing. We are in the hot spot where everything is getting built.”
Silo Square, the 288-acre, $200-million mixed-use project along Getwell Road, currently is in the works. “And a friend of ours is building another 120-acre development.”
Alex and Kim still have future plans for Elfo’s. “We’ve been slowly talking about the front. Doing a little outside patio. Piazza. But it’ll probably be next year before we get around to it. We’ve redone so much work inside bringing it up to our standards.
“We wanted our customers to have the true Grisanti’s experience — white tablecloths, good service, big glasses of wine. It just took a while to get that dialed in.”
