Rudy Grisanti – Memphis Flyer

Dino’s Grill is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. So hold up a Dino’s homemade ravioli and toast the iconic Midtown restaurant.

Not many Memphis restaurants can say they’ve been around for half a century.

“I think a lot has to do with the atmosphere,” says owner Mario Grisanti, 43. “Not too many places have that kind of decor or the old-school feel of what around here would be considered a diner. I think that’s a major reason that sets us apart.”

The restaurant was named after the late Dino Grisanti, father of Mario’s dad, Rudy Grisanti. Rudy retired, but he still helps out at the restaurant. “For some people it’s like stepping back in time, to tell you the honest truth,” says Rudy, 72. “We haven’t really changed a lot of anything in the last 50 years.

“It’s like going home. It’s like comfort food. And people feel comfortable, like family.”

The anniversary dates to when Dino’s Grill opened as Dino’s Southwestern Grill on January 2, 1973. “My direct family — father, grandfather, great-grandfather — have been making food for people and living off of that for 80-plus years,” Mario says. “It’s a very humbling experience to know that people come in to eat what we make.”

Mario, who took over ownership from his dad four years ago, made some changes. “Pretty much just make it look fresh. Make it look new again and not old and worn out. Like painting and getting new floors, making sure everything was clean.”

He also added pizzas. “It’s one of the things I thought we should have been doing a long time ago, but I never got to it.

“I ordered seven different crusts and 10 or 12 different pepperonis, five or six sausages. And I just kind of had to play around with the cheese and the dough and the toppings to get a flavor that I wanted. That took a little while to do, but it all came together.”

They offer cheese, meat, supreme, veggie, and chicken pesto pizzas. “The pizza sauce we use isn’t really a pizza sauce. It’s our marinara sauce. That sets it apart from a lot of other people’s pizza.”

Mario also introduced their Italian Chicken Philly sandwich. “We already had all the ingredients to make it.”

Asked what people might not know about Dino’s, Mario says, “I don’t know how many people coming in realize we sell frozen raviolis. They’re all handmade from scratch. I don’t put it in a machine or a former. Each one looks different ’cause they’re all handmade. I don’t know of any other places that make them like we do.

“My great-grandfather [the late Frank Benedetti, Dino’s stepfather] started doing frozen raviolis down on Beale and Main at the State Cafe, but he would only do them on Thursdays. When my dad moved over here in ’73, that’s when he put them on the menu full time.”

Dino’s doesn’t just offer Italian food. “We do a plate lunch during the day, like meat-and-three. Chicken and dressing and meat loaf. Fried catfish on Fridays. Grilled calf’s liver, chicken livers. And the greens, corn, creamed corn, beets, yams, mashed potatoes, green peas.”

The restaurant also is known for its all-you-can-eat spaghetti on Thursday nights. As for who holds the record for eating the most spaghetti on a Thursday night, Mario says, “I’ve heard nine plates from a Rhodes football player. As for me, personally, I’ve only seen someone eat four.”

Running a restaurant was in the cards, but Mario also played drums in the Kuldips rock band when he was a high school freshman. “I thought it would be cool to do the music thing. [But] I always wanted to be in the restaurant business.

“I found a letter the last time we moved. It was from myself in second or third grade. And it was, ‘What do you want to be in the future?’ And I said I wanted to own a restaurant and have a red sports car.”

Mario got the restaurant. What about the red sports car? “No. I got a blue one.”

Dino’s Grill is at 645 North McLean Boulevard; (901) 278-9127.

Dino’s Grill owner Mario Grisanti and his dad, Rudy Grisanti, gave basically the same answer to my question: “Is Dino’s the only Italian restaurant in Memphis that puts chicken and spinach in its ravioli instead of ground beef and cheese?”

“As far as I know, we’re the only ones doing it,” Mario says.

“To be honest, as far as I know we’re the only ones that make a chicken ravioli,” Rudy says.

Mario Grisanti and Dino’s ravioli

“To my knowledge, that’s the way we’ve always done it,” Mario says. “Even going back to my great-grandfather Frank Benedetti at the State Cafe at Beale and Main. Everybody else’s, it seems, is beef and cheese.”

Dino’s doesn’t make beef raviolis. “It’s not an option,” Mario says.

That can surprise people. “I had a lady call me. She had a to-go order. About 30 minutes after she picked up her order, she called and said, ‘I just want you to know everything was great, but the inside of my raviolis were green.’ I just started laughing. ‘It’s chicken and spinach that makes it green.’ She said, ‘Okay. I feel so much better.'”

“We have a lot of people who come in and say, ‘Well, we want beef ravioli,”’ Rudy says. “I tell them, ‘I’m sorry. Our ravioli has spinach and chicken in them. Try them.'”

The response is, “These are great. These are fantastic.”

“It really is lighter, for one thing,” Rudy says. “Since we make our own pasta for it, it makes a lighter dish because sometimes raviolis can be pretty heavy.”

And, he says, “In a sense, it’s better for you because it’s less cholesterol and stuff like that. The chicken is really a better choice than trying to add a lot of beef to your diet.”

They’ve made other raviolis, Rudy says. “I’ve made seafood raviolis, and I put a tarragon cream sauce on them. We’ve made salmon raviolis with saffron sauce. But, traditionally, when we make ravioli, it’s always chicken and spinach.”

“We used to make a cheese ravioli with parmesan, ricotta and eggs, and seasonings, but there was just no real call for it,” Mario says. “It’s labor-intensive to make. We’re making probably 20 dozen a day. I don’t have the time to make several different fillings and put them all together.”

Asked how chicken ravioli came about, Rudy says, “I guess it was because beef was a lot more expensive during the Depression than chicken was. That’s just his old recipe, and that’s the way we’ve always made it.

“The main ingredient is the chicken, and then we add spinach to it,” Rudy says. “The spinach naturally makes it greener. But he never really said why, and I never questioned him about it.”

Benedetti added pork brains as a binder to the raviolis, but after he retired, Rudy began using eggs because he couldn’t find decent pork brains.

Unless a customer orders marinara sauce, Dino’s meat sauce includes ground beef, tomato sauce, water, garlic, Italian seasoning, onions, and celery, Mario says. “Marinara is the exact same thing minus the ground beef. And we add diced tomatoes.”

They make ravioli every day, he says. “We’ve done a lot of frozen ravioli, lately. It’s the exact same ravioli, just fried at a boil, with a side of meat sauce.”

Frozen raviolis were very popular when the pandemic began, Mario says. “When all of this first started, we sold a lot of frozen raviolis because one, people can make their own sauce. A lot of people felt more comfortable cooking their own food at their house.”

They’re still popular. “We sell them year-round frozen. I had three dozen go out yesterday, and four dozen tomorrow.”

Simplicity — in addition to flavor — might be one of the keys to the popularity of the food at Dino’s Grill. “None of the stuff we make here is real fancy,” Mario says. “Just good quality, simple, homemade stuff.”

Note: Dino’s still offers its all-you-can-eat spaghetti for $8.95 on Thursday nights.

Dino’s Grill is at 645 N. McLean; 278-9127.