Elfo Grisanti’s, by Alex and Kim Grisanti, opened in November of 2020 at 5627 Getwell Road in Southaven, Mississippi.
“We built this thing in the beginning of the pandemic and we succeeded,” says Alex Grisanti. “We did what everybody else told us we were pretty much stupid for doing.”
The restaurant, which customers dubbed “Grisanti’s Southaven,” is still going strong.
When Covid hit, Charles Cavallo, owner of The Cupboard Restaurant, let the Grisantis open their 9Dough1 food truck in his parking lot. “This was when all the restaurants were closed,” Alex says.
The food truck, which they still operate, specializes in flatbread pizzas, Italian salad, cannelloni, and panna cotta. “Instead of sitting around waiting for something to happen, I got out there and got after it. It threw us into a whole other level of being back on our feet and being able to take care of our family and get us to where we are now.”
The Grisantis originally brought their food truck to Southaven in March 2020 and parked it in front of a liquor store. Before they left work that day, developer John Reeves asked them if they wanted to open a restaurant. The space was perfect.
Grisanti’s originally was split into two sides with a wall. Alex and Kim opened up the side with a brick oven as a to-go pizza spot. “People were stir-crazy from being inside. They wanted any opportunity they could to get out.”
They opened up the other side for fine dining that November. A lot of the locals weren’t familiar with the Grisanti name, he says. But, he adds, “We stayed. We never shut our doors since we opened in November.”
They later closed the pizza section, which they turned into a bar. “I ripped the wall out and I did a big U-shaped horseshoe-type bar like we had at Ronnie’s,” Grisanti says, referring to his father’s old restaurant, Ronnie Grisanti & Sons, which was on Poplar and Humes.
“That’s where so many memories were made in our family,” he says. “Those are the things that make Grisanti’s. We don’t ever want that to die. We want people to have their special times and memories of Grisanti’s being good times and happy times.”
They hired interior designer Teresa Brown to design the bar area. She did the walls in white-brushed concrete. “They look like they’re a thousand years old,” Grisanti says. “It’s very European. Heavy. Antique looking. And then she did another wall. It’s black with gold leaf on it. I told her ‘Mafia modern’ is what I wanted the vibe to be, the feel of the restaurant.”
To run the bar, Grisanti also hired Tim Harris (one of the old bartenders from Ronnie’s), Missy Katz, and Janay Carmona.
The bar is now open — and customers love it. “They’re calling Grisanti’s ‘the Cheers of Southaven.’”
But, he says, “Hopefully, by the end of November will be the official christening of the new bar.”
Similarly, the dining room color scheme is gold with black accents. “I want everything to be serene and comfortable and white tablecloth. I don’t want you to feel that it’s all stuffy and proper. I want it to have some fun and whimsical things.”
Like Ronnie’s old restaurant on Poplar, Grisanti’s has photos of customers hanging on the bathroom walls. “All the restaurant is filled with black-and-white pictures of the family. The decor is very upbeat and modern with twists of the past.”
Grisanti’s also features live music on Thursday nights.
As for the food, Grisanti says he’s hired “a top-notch chef.”
His next step? “To get back to focusing on my kitchen and my recipes.
“My first concentration is to do what we’ve been doing for 115 years and do it right. I want people to eat my Miss Mary’s salad, Elfo’s special, lasagna, spinach, and manicotti and say, ‘This tastes like it did 40 years ago, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, 100 years ago. I want people’s taste buds’ memories and everything to go, ‘Wow. Why I come here is for the camaraderie of what you’ve been doing since 1909.’”
Grisanti also does his specials. “I stay pretty true to my Northern Italian way of cooking, which is pretty much what is fresh and seasonal. I try to live by my heritage in cooking, which is take a natural raw product and let it speak for itself. I’m not into all this freeze it, shock it, put gelatin on it. I’m not the scientist here. I’m just an old-school, burn-and-bruise chef.’”