Tag: Ronnie Grisanti’s

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Best Bets: Elfo Special at Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant

Lately, I’ve been making my own quarantine version of the Elfo Special, a Grisanti family classic, at home.

The Grisanti version is made with domestic Gulf white shrimp, mushrooms, garlic, olive oil, and medium-sized spaghetti al dente. My version is made with canned tuna fish, canned mushrooms, olive oil, and whatever pasta I’ve got in the kitchen.

I expected Judd Grisanti, owner of Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant, to blow up when I describe my abomination of the Elfo Special, one of his restaurant’s most popular dishes. Instead, he patiently says, “That’s the thing with cooking. Everybody has their own versions of a lot of things. I’m very thankful you’re at home cooking and you’re trying to be doing it — and that the Grisantis had an influence.”

But the good news is that the real Elfo Special is available for curbside takeout at Ronnie Grisanti’s. It’s one of the restaurant’s dishes that’s available as an individual entree or part of a large Grisanti lunch or dinner package.

I asked why the Elfo Special is so special. “I think it’s synonymous with the Grisanti’s restaurant,” Judd says. “This time of year being Lent, my grandfather started making it during Lent.”

I remember talking to Judd’s dad, the late Ronnie Grisanti, about the Elfo Special several years ago. Ronnie told me it was created during Lent as an item for Catholics who couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Ronnie’s dad, the late Elfo Grisanti, created it in the 1940s at his restaurant, Grisanti’s on Main.

The whole menu isn’t available at Ronnie Grisanti’s, but the restaurant does offer the “Bulk Menu,” which feeds four to five or eight to 10 people. The Bulk Menu is available for lunch and dinner, Judd says. “We have the manicotti, lasagna, Elfo Special, chicken marsala on there. Spaghetti and meatballs. We have other things.”

Ronnie’s also offers evening specials. The day I talked to Judd they were doing a “family four pack” that included “four airline cuts of chicken — wings still attached to the breast — stuffed with prosciutto and smoked mozzarella and marinated in balsamic vinegar, and then oven roasted over plain reggiano parmigiano risotto. And sautéed broccolini. And then you also get a Miss Mary or Caesar salad for four.

“The idea is if they’re getting tired of lasagna or manicotti on the dinner for four, they can say, ‘Let’s see what the special is.’ We give a little more variety. That’s why we’re doing that.”

Desserts are extra. The choices are chocolate cheesecake, tiramisu, and cannolis. All of which are great alternatives to my at-home desserts, which include five-day-old chocolate cake and leftover Valentine’s Day candy.

I asked Judd what his schedule is like these days with curbside service instead of table service. “Just a little bit more hectic. I mean, it’s not bad since we got the routine down. We’ve been really good at it. But every name has a number that goes with it. Just like a table has a number that goes with it. So nothing gets misplaced. Everybody had to come up with their own system and what works for them.

“I think at first we were going with the regular menu. Then we realized people want to feed the family and we’ve got to come up with something else, like the Bulk Menu. For example when everything was normal — back in the normal days — people would order takeout: one Elfo, one filet, one veal marsala, one this or that. Not make it two of this, three of that. They’re trying to simplify their order. Make it much easier to feed the family that way.”

What will remain from this experience when times return to normal at Ronnie Grisanti’s? “I think what we’ll take away from this is we will no longer discourage takeout. Before, when we really got busy in the night, we more or less discouraged takeout. But I think we’re well trained in it now.”

And not only do you get takeout of popular Ronnie Grisanti dishes, you also can buy grocery items. Customers can make their own Grisanti cuisine, including the Elfo Special, at home. “We have people calling in. They can buy the spaghetti, the shrimp, garlic, and butter and put it up at home at their leisure.”

The Grisanti grocery list also includes its Pomodoro sauce, meat sauce, the raviolis, iceberg lettuce, mushrooms, and more. “The biggest thing, of course, is our ground beef chuck — it’s a blend that we put together — and Italian sausage. Salmon sells real well. And shrimp sells very well.”

Ronnie Grisanti’s was giving away a special item the day I called. “If you get an order to go, you get a complimentary toilet paper,” Judd says. “Mont Royale toilet paper.”

That’s also one of the items on the restaurant’s grocery list.

Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant is at 6150 Poplar, Suite 122, in the Regalia Shopping Center. (901) 850 0191.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Sneak Peek at Ronnie Grisanti’s

CREDIT: MIchael Donahue

MIchael Donahue

Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant in the Regalia shopping center is slated to open Sept. 28.

You can go home again — if you’re a fan of the late Ronnie Grisanti and his uncle Big John Grisanti.

But you’ll have to wait until September 28th. That’s when Ronnie Grisanti’s, the new restaurant owned by chef Judd Grisanti, son of Ronnie Grisanti, is slated to open at 6150 Poplar in the Regalia shopping center.

Ronnie Grisanti’s is reminiscent of the restaurant owned by Ronnie on Poplar and the one owned by Big John on Airways. The new 4,700 square-foot restaurant, in shades of burgundy wine and gold, features seating for 132 inside and 26 outside on the patio. It evokes the past but it also is contemporary.

The menu includes Grisanti favorites, but it also will include some high-tech dishes made with kitchen equipment that wasn’t around when Judd’s grandfather, Elfo Grisanti, had a restaurant on South Main.

“It’s all the old Grisanti’s traditional stuff like the stuffed raviolis, lasagna, Italian sauce — stuff we’re known for — manicotti and those things. Toasted raviolis. But then putting a little bit of new world to it.”

Judd now will be using sous vide, liquid nitrogen, and a smoke gun. “I’m going to the future here. I had to re-educate myself on all those in the past year.”

He’ll use liquid nitrogen to make cocktail sauce for his oysters. “To make it more like a sorbet. The sorbet keeps the Northeast coast oysters cold while they’re eating them. I put a little bit of the sorbet on each oyster.”

Judd also bought an oven from Italy. “This is an electric oven that goes up to 1,400 degrees and cooks the most perfect pizza you ever had.”

As for the restaurant’s traditional/modern decor, Judd says, “I wanted something new and old. In Italy, they have all these old buildings, but they have a little modern twist to them inside. It’s amazing how they do the new and the old together. And I wanted something like that.”

Booths and a mural — both integral parts of Ronnie Grisanti restaurants — are included in the new Ronnie Grisanti’s. Bill Turri painted the massive mural of Lucca on the North wall that includes “all the hot spots,” Judd says.”That’s our home town.”

The new Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant is a tribute “to my grandfather, to my uncle, and to my dad,” Judd says. “They paved the road for me. I played in the kitchen at Airways as a child. That was my playground. I literally grew up in the kitchen with my dad and my uncles.”

[slideshow-1]

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Little Big Town

I was wandering through the Midtown Kroger on a recent Saturday night. Sounds like the beginning of a really bad novel, right? Or maybe I just have a lousy social life? Neither, actually. We were having friends over the next day and I needed a couple of things, and decided I’d rather go at night than battle the Sunday post-church crowd.

So, there I was, pondering whether or not I needed another package of bacon, when I saw former Mayor A C Wharton, also shopping alone. He was wearing a sharp, pin-striped seersucker suit. Crisp white shirt. No tie. I felt a bit under-dressed.

“Hello, Mr. Mayor,” I said.

“Why, hello,” he responded. “How are you?”

“Pretty good, sir.”

“You have plenty to write about these days, don’t you?”

“I sure do.”

The former mayor went on to mention that he really liked a column I wrote about President Trump’s cabinet meeting — the one where everyone in the room toadied up to Trump with fulsome praise.

“I now require my staff to praise me at the beginning of each meeting,” Wharton said, grinning.

“Good plan,” I said. “I do the same. Keeps them on their toes.”

And on we went about our shopping. It was such a Memphis moment. At that same Kroger I’ve seen tons of Grizzlies players, notable musicians of every stripe (from Stax legends to opera singers to current stars), leaders in the arts and education and theater, congressmen, chefs, hotshot lawyers — you name it. Everybody in Memphis goes Krogering, it seems. It’s the great equalizer.

Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant at Poplar and Humes was also that kind of place. You’d see Wharton, Harold Ford, Steve Cohen, Willie Herenton, Jerry West, and every Grizzlies coach who ever coached, including the three Italians in a row we once had (Fratelli, Barone, and Iavaroni), each of whom I saw hanging at Ronnie’s bar on many occasions.

It was the center of the Memphis dining universe from the mid-’90s to the mid-aughts, and it was often my habit to go on Tuesdays after we put the Flyer to bed. I never had a boring evening or a bad meal.

And Ronnie was at the center of it all, greeting everyone by name, shuffling you to the bar with a bit of gossip in your ear while you waited for your table. No reservations at Ronnie’s. You showed up and took your chances. And if you were a regular, at some point Ronnie would take your picture and put it on the wall somewhere. Mine was on the men’s room door, but hey, it was there, a badge of honor, a sign I’d made it. Or something.

Ronnie died last weekend, at 79, marking the end of an era. He’d moved his restaurant out to Collierville in recent years, out of my dining comfort zone, but I’m sure it was a nice place, because he was a nice man — larger than life — and he’ll be missed by all who knew him.

I spend my Tuesday nights at another joint now, a cozy, friendly place at Cooper and Peabody, near my house. I call the owners and bartenders my friends. I can’t go there without seeing 10 people I know. And that’s the way I like it, a home away from home. A place where everybody knows your name.

In these tempestuous times, where change comes at the drop of a tweet, it’s good to have traditions and to savor them, like you savor your food and your friends and your family.

And your memories.

Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com