A passeggiata through Houston’s Italian restaurant history

A passeggiata is the traditional evening promenade in Italian towns and villages. Though Italian food and restaurants in our area might have a rather undistinguished history in national terms – especially compared to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago – a meandering, somewhat selective, chronological stroll – or passeggiata – of 200-plus of its significant or interesting particulars can be entertaining, and even informative, mainly since Houston is now a top restaurant city. This is due, in part, to substantial contributions from Italian-Americans and Italians. And Italian restaurants have long been a larger part of the dining scene, here and throughout the country, than the size of the Italian population would indicate.
 
With far fewer Italians than in other cities, it took a while for Italian restaurants to shine here. Even as late as 1982 Texas Monthly, if not the most knowledgeable or critical source concerning Italian-themed restaurants over the years, opined: “Houston was slighted when the restaurant gods passed out Italian eateries.” A few years after that, Houston Italian restaurants would gain praise from national publications, signifying mostly a change in the quality of some new restaurants. Rather more knowledgeable reporters, too.
 
I penned the original, much shorter, version of this for My Table magazine back in 2011 and have updated several times since then. Passeggiata might not be the best descriptor now, maybe pellegrinaggio, pilgrimage, something much longer. But it's an enjoyable topic that has resonated, as Italian food in most of its guises is fun and well-loved, more so than most cuisines it seems. According to a once much-quoted truism from playwright Neil Simon, “there are two laws in the universe: the law of gravity and everyone likes Italian food.”

Updated last on April 23, 2026.
 
1884 – The Houston Directory published for 1884-1885 lists grocers with names like Fenno, Manno, Maretti and Roco. Alexander Bergamini – the owner of the Casino saloon at 72 Congress – is, appropriately, a New Orleans native. There is also a restaurant named Delmonico; it’s not Italian, but rather, named after the famous New York establishment.
 
1895 – The December 12, 1895 Houston Post has an advertisement for Pizzini’s at 513-515 Main Street downtown. It advertises itself as a “French Restaurant”.
 
1905 – Carrabba’s Chicken “Bryan Texas” is the most popular dish across the entire chain, and named after Bryan, 100 miles north of Houston. An Italian emigration official, Adolfo Rossi, reported that 2,500 Sicilian immigrants were working the land there in 1905. Along with two in New Jersey, it is “perhaps the largest Italian agricultural community in the United States” according to a later government report. Initially, Sicilians from different villages settled on either sides of the Brazos River, an example of campanilismo – the extreme provincialism – of most Italians at the time.
  
1906 – Immigrating at age 23 from Sicily to Galveston, Joe Grasso would revolutionize the local shrimping industry, eventually introducing motorized shrimp trawlers, modern packaging, and blast-freezing for shrimp, the last, initially for the Japanese market. Early in his career, most of his catch were used as bait as not many people ate shrimp then. Shrimp scampi would likely be less popular without his work.

1911 – Galveston’s oldest restaurant, Gaido’s, opens in 1911. It is named after the founding Sicilian family that still owns and operates it. It is a seafood rather than an Italian restaurant, though. Eventually replicating in Houston where a New York Times reports seventy years later in an overview of Houston for visitors that “you go to dinner at Gaido's, a seafood restaurant on South Main Street eat six different kinds of oyster dishes…and then drive virtually across the street to see the rodeo at the Astrodome.”
 
1913 – Houston has two pasta factories: Houston Macaroni Manufacturing Co. and Magnolia Macaroni Manufacturing & Co.
 
1920 – Houston is home to Chinese and Japanese restaurants, but seemingly no Italian restaurant. This is when the city’s population was around 140,000.
 
1924 – On July 20, both the Houston Post and Chronicle reported a society vignette that a certain. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Godwin gave a small dinner party “at the new Italian restaurant in Hermann park.” This was at the café that was opened to patrons of the golf course at the park by John Pappa and Vincent Vallone the month before and seemed to also be open for special events. Vallone, a native of Calabria, would go on to have a colorful, criminal, and occasionally murderous career in Houston.
 
1926 – Mme. Cerracchio’s, likely Houston’s first permanent Italian restaurant, opens in a stately colonial-style mansion at 2414 Main Street, in today’s Midtown, which also houses the studio of Mrs. Cerracchio’s husband, the sculptor Enrico Cerracchio. He created one of the city’s most iconic civic artworks, the bronze equestrian statue of Sam Houston in Hermann Park. The restaurant advertises table d’hote service from 6:00 to 9:00 and a la carte afterwards in “an atmosphere of refinement and culture.” With a slogan of “Where Houston’s ‘Who’s Who’ meets and entertains the Nation’s ‘Who’s Who’,” it serves the food inspired from Enrico’s birthplace near Naples with “raviolis, meat balls, and fine Italian spaghetti.” Mme. Cerracchio’s is a more appealing-sounding for an Italian and French restaurant than that of her maiden surname, Kowalski. She was a Polish-American from eastern Pennsylvania. The restaurant becomes Nino’s the next year.
 
1927 – On September 7, the Houston Chronicle reported on a spaghetti dinner hosted by Vincent Vallone at his home in the East End. It was an annual event that this well-known caterer and Hermann Park concessionaire had held for “several years around Labor Day for distinguished members of labor, political, and business organizations. The guest of honor was Lieutenant Governor Barry Miller.” Mayor Oscar Holcombe was also in attendance as were the city manager, police chief, judges and labor leaders. 
 
1930 – Del Monico’s, “The Original Spaghetti House” opens at 3622 Main in today’s Midtown, where Winnie’s sits today, featuring spaghetti and meatball, spaghetti with mushroom sauce, ravioli, fried chicken and steaks. This menu is the template of Italian restaurants to come for years. Opened by Vincent Navarro, immigrant from the Naples area, along with his wife Camille, who is in the kitchen, began at that address as a grocery store in 1906. The business rebooted downtown to Louisiana and Jefferson in 1937 and the moved in the late 1950s to Westheimer in Highland Village, eventually closing after a four-decade run. Del Monico’s was a popular restaurant name around the county, referencing the Delmonico restaurants in New York, the most famous restaurants in America during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

1932 – On a late Wednesday night, January 27, 1932, when caterer Vincent Vallone and his wife were at a reception for the famed tenor Beniamino Gigli, their substantial two-story brick house at 4219 Lamar, which had hosted many dignataries over the years, was destroyed in an explosion and subsequent fire.  The aftermath was depicted in a large photo in the Houston Chronicle the next day. A fair part of the paper's initial reporting was about a pigeon that had inadvertently been hit by a stream of water from the fire hose, dazing it. That article even ended with: “The fireman crawled over the roof and reached for the bird. As his hand came close the pigeon ducked, spread its wings and flew. The pigeon flew directly into the blazing house, while spectators gasped and murmured in pity.” The cause of the blast was never determined.

1944 – Massa’s opens in downtown Houston, and is in business for over seventy years. Like Gaido’s in Galveston, it carries the name of Sicilian-American owners and is also a seafood restaurant rather than an Italian one.
 
1947 – In the fall of 1947, a restaurant in Houston advertises pizza for possibly the first time in the city. Listed as “La Pizza” with among over a dozen other items like Spaghetti a la Marinara, Spaghetti with Crab Gravy, Spaghetti with Chicken, and Meat Raviola, the small notice in the Houston Post is for Vincent’s at 1701 Calhoun, in southeastern downtown. “Vincent Vallone, Mgr.” who was recently pardoned after serving several years of 99-year sentence for murder.

1947 – Joe Matranga opens up a an intimate restaurant called the "Ding-a-Ling" on Irvington north of downtown that decades later changes its name to Matranga’s. The garrulous, oft-crooning owner “was a character,” remembered Johnny Carrabba. It becomes a favorite Italian for most Houstonians, and carries on until 1990 known for dishes like spaghetti and meatballs and veal Parmesan served with plenty of “simmering tomato sauce and garlic – lots of garlic” that resonated with customers. Matranga once admitted to a reporter that his famous sauce contained “onion and garlic and olive oil and salt, pepper and basil” along with tomato paste and was on the stove for eight hours.
 
1948 – An inexpensive Italian restaurant called Big Humphrey’s opens on Park Place in southeast Houston. It is named after owner Joe Vitale’s professional wrestling persona. He opens a second location on Bissonnet, and later, the remaining restaurant moves to Pearland and operated until January 2020.
 
1948 – Along with her husband, Mama Ninfa – later the instigator of the nationwide fajita craze – opens a tortilla and pizza dough factory on Navigation east of downtown. Pizza dough to be used at home. The Italian dough part might not have been a surprise since her husband was an Italian-American with family roots in the Naples area. Much later her offspring open Laurenzo's Italian Bar and Grille that lasts just three months and Bambolino's, a drive-through slice place, one of which remains on Westheimer.
 
1949 – The biggest local news story of the year, and one that made headlines for years, began on a July evening on a lonely road south of Houston when the 65-year-old Italian-born restaurateur Vincent Vallone was shot in the head with a 12-gauge automatic shotgun while driving his Cadillac. This had followed on the heels of three unsolved murders of local Italians. Vallone was not only a well-known caterer, nightclub owner, and convicted then pardoned murderer, he had made the local newspapers over the years. There was an attempted murder, an arrest and later acquittal in a headlines-grabbing, sprawling Federal narcotics case also involving Sam Maceo of Galveston – and a total of 88 people, including a “convicted French murderer, now awaiting deportation to France for beheading” – and bookmaking. He was one “whose name was linked with various murders and other crimes.” Suspects in Vallone’s murder were apprehended several months later and the subsequent trials and news reports proved sensational: three venues; the defendant and suspected trigger-man who was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne during the war with service in Sicily, the Italian peninsula, and Normandy; a confession wrought by police beatings; an assertion by defense “that for 15 years before he want to the pen Vincent Vallone got 20 per cent of every illegal enterprise in Houston”; a hung jury; finally, an acquittal in San Angelo engineered by star defense attorney Percy Foreman, who was then punched by the Harris County sheriff and a Texas Ranger in the court causing an overnight hospitalization. More than a decade later, the Houston Post called “the Vincent Vallone murder case, the last Mafia slaying in Harris County”, which may or may not have been true.  
 
1949 – The Spaghetti House opens "on Post Oak Road, just to the left off the Katy highway," as the Houston Post described a few months later. It is from a registered architect Frank Azzarelli and his wife, “Mrs Azzarelli [who] takes personal charge of the kitchen." That brief article calls it "an, unpretentious, homey sort of place” that "rates with the best." The small restaurant serves “spaghetti in any of its dozen ways” along with other Italian-American dishes plus the Sicilian desserts, "sfingi, cassata, cannoli." The restaurant would grow in size in several addresses on North Post Oak Road for the next eleven years, better known as Azzarelli's. 
 
1949 – On November 2, the Houston Post reported that “Tony Vallone will give abut 150 invited guests a preview of Vincent’s Sorrento, Italian specialy [sic] café at 6PM Wednesday…Vincent’s Sorrento, which is downtown at 1419 Fannin at Bell, was the restaurant project Vincent Vallone was working on when he was killed last July. His son, Tony, went about with his father’s plans after the elder Vallone’s death. Giulio Zanga, a native of Milan, will be in charge of the kitchen.” It advertises “Romantic, intimate setting, with a background of artistic music” and its specialty, “Ravioli with spaghetti.” This dish of half spaghetti and half ravioli was actually a very common dish from the 1930s through the 1960s around the country.
 
1950 – The Bureau of the Census publication for 1950 lists 4,195 Italians in Houston, those who were born in Italy or who have had at least one parent born there, out of a population of almost 600,000. Forty-three cities have more Italians than Houston, led by New York (684,865), Chicago (116,595), Philadelphia (115,205), Boston (53,335), Newark (49,275), Detroit (43,580), Buffalo (36,615), Rochester, NY (34,555), Providence, RI (34,370), San Francisco (32,960), and Cleveland (32,340); the reason why there was a paucity of Italian restaurants here compared to other large cities for quite a while.
 
1950 – The scandalous, i.e. adulterous, affair between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner is confirmed for the nation in late January at Italian restaurant in Houston, Vincent’s Sorrento downtown. Sinatra is in town for a several week gig at the grand Shamrock Hotel opened a couple of years earlier. A guest of Mayor Oscar Holcombe along with composer Jimmy Van Heusen at the restaurant, Sinatra accosted a photographer from the Houston Press, the city’s third newspaper, who is about to capture the couple on film. But proprietor Tony Vallone, a son of Vincent, intervenes before blows were thrown. The news was out, though. Frank Lloyd Wright, in Houston for an award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), toured the new 1,100-room Shamrock Hotel. It did not exactly garner his approval. “Tragic,” “Monstrosity,” an “Emerald Folly,” and an “architectural venereal disease” were a few of his assessments. The building would eventually be demolished in 1987.
 
1951 – Luigi’s opens at 1701 Calhoun at Jefferson in the southern part of downtown, occupying the space that once housed Vincent’s, with “pizza, lasagne imbottite, veal scaloppini, spaghetti, raviola” along with “other fine Neapolitan dishes” on the menu, each “prepared individually by ‘Mama’ Velotta” who owns the restaurant with her husband, Sam, born Salvatore, both natives of New York. A dinner order also comes with minestrone, salad, spaghetti, garlic bread, spumoni, cookies, coffee, and a bottle of wine.
 
1951 – A new Vincent’s opens on Holcombe and Main across from the Shamrock Hotel where “you can find a wide variety of Italian dishes and your meal is served in the quiet atmosphere of candlelight.” Operated by Benny Vallone, son of the deceased Vincent and brother of Tony Vallone at The Sorrento – formerly Vincent’s Sorrento – it becomes a regular mention for the local dining and nightlife columnists for years. Its run lasts until 1959 when it becomes a steakhouse called the Rib-Eye, which also serves a few Italian items like lasagna and veal Parmesan.
 
1952 – "The Police Beat" column in the Houston Post reports on April 25 about a burgulary of Azzarelli's at 829 North Post Oak Road in which beer, wine, cigars, and antique pipes were stolen. Owner Frank Azzarelli was especially distraught about what "a heathen" had done with his sauce that was left cooking overnight at the restaurant: "'My 40 gallons of wonderful sauce were fermenting,' he explained. 'They had poured beer into it.' Each day Mr Azzarelli combines ham, beef, chicken, tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, onions and other condiments and cooks the mixture over a low flame for 18 hours. That day his customers got no sauce on their spaghetti." The paper had reported a month earlier, in lighter news, that the “beefy, food-loving” Frank Azzarelli has recently started a Houston branch of Overweights Anonymous because, “he had gained 77 pounds since opening his restaurant three years ago.”

1952 – Valian’s Drive-In on 6935 South Main, between Kirby and Buffalo Speedway, which opened in 1950, is now advertising “Pizza Pie.” It’s not the first to do – at least Vincent’s Sorrento and Luigi’s, proclaiming “The World’s Finest Pizza” in print – are serving it before, but Valian’s becomes a local favorite and later expands to several locations with the name Valian’s Real Pizza. It is an early example that you do not have to have Italian roots, the owners are Armenian-American, to serve pizza that resonates with customers.
 
1953 – “Nowadays there’s so much talk about lasagna and pizza that everyone is asking for genuine imported recipes,” according to the Houston Post on September 25, so it obliges with cooking instructions for those two dishes from Luigi’s, which had moved to 4704 Montrose, just south of the Southwest Freeway today. Like pizza, lasagna is a fairly new dish to Americans then; only in the 1940s was it regularly seen on menus in the big Italian enclaves. That “famous lasagna” in the Post is one Luigi’s most popular dishes. It features a quickly cooked tomato sauce of canned tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, and sugar, tiny fried beef meatballs, fresh fennel-laden pork sausage, shredded chicken, canned mushrooms, ricotta and mozzarella within layers of dried lasagna noodles. The Velotta’s operate Luigi’s for half-dozen years at the Montrose address before turning management over to their daughter and son-in-law. After Luigi’s departure from 1701 Calhoun, another Italian restaurant, Gallo’s, moves in, becoming the third Italian there.
 
1953 – In January, it was reported that Joe DiMaggio, “(no relation to the famous ballplayer) now operating Houston’s newest Italian restaurant at Westheimer and Shepherd…All food is prepared to order for dinner.” Nightlife columnist Charlie Evans in the Houston Chronicle calls Joe DiMaggio’s “one of the neatest dining spots in that area” later in the year. It becomes well-known for its pizzas and, especially when in season, crawfish bisque, as Joe DiMaggio is from Louisiana.
 
1953 – In November of that year, the Sacred Heart Society of West Little York, Roman Catholic men’s group founded by Sicilian immigrants from in and around Palermo, begins its tradition of a Thursday spaghetti lunch that is inexpensive and open to the public at its home in Whitney Hall on Airline just north of Crosstimbers. With the lunches remaining popular well into the new millennium, the meatballs and long-simmered tomato sauce follow the same recipes as when the lunches began. The fresh Italian sausage is made by Society members.

 1956 – Soon after reopening Sorrento at 6513 Old Richmond Road in late 1956, the vice squad raids and arrests proprietor Tony Vallone on sports gambling charges. The vice squad raids the restaurant at least once more and Vallone makes the local papers several times in subsequent years including headlines, as with the Houston Post in July, 1962, "Gambling Raid Nets A Familiar Figure: Tony Vallone….," reporting that he "has been arrested here for gambling activities many times here." In 1964, the restaurant moves 6611 Bissonnet near Beechnut.
 
1958 – The Pizza Oven from Joe Geaccone and Paul Fineberg serving pizza for dine-in and take-out opens at 3130 Richmond near Buffalo Speedway, where the initial El Tiempo is today. Though owners plans for “eight or 10 strategic locations around the city” when starting never materialized, it became a popular spot for a few years before closing.

1960 – Pino’s opens at 3000 Cullen adjacent to Jeppesen Stadium and across from the main entrance to the University of Houston. It is owned by Pino Farinola from coastal Brindisi in Puglia in southeastern Italy. The restaurant is an old house and seats about fifty and even has a special drive-in window for to-go orders. It was preceded a couple of years earlier by Edda’s Italian Restaurant on OST in the Thunderbird Motel, run by Pino in the kitchen and his sister, Edda, up front serving ravioli, cannelloni, tagliatelle, tortellini ai funghi, braciole, lasagna and pizza and more for dine-in and take-out.
 
1961 – Casa Poli opens early in the year at 2231 W. Holcombe across from the Shamrock by transplanted Brooklyners Joseph and Frances (Mama Poli) Papocchia, whose last name is spelled in a several ways in print. It serves the familiar Italian-American fare, with the pastas made in-house – manicotti is a specialty – and also a popular New York-area items, clams oreganata and veal and peppers, but assertively no pizza. It’s open for nearly fifteen years, then the quaint two-story house seating about fifty is sold and becomes Buon Appetito in 1975.
 
1961 – The “famous” Luigi’s reopens at 5402 San Jacinto in what is now the Museum District 1961 with Sam and “Mama” Velotta after their unsuccessful attempt at a two-level restaurant and private club there called Chateau V. The new Luigi’s initially includes a supper club “featuring exotic dancers” on the second floor, but the restaurant moves again the next year to just outside of Kemah on FM 518.
 
1963 – Frank Azzarelli, then the proprietor of Azzarelli’s Continental Kitchen, dies of a heart attack at age 62. His wife had passed away the year before. The restaurant was at 4714 N. Shepherd, not far south of St. Pius High School, for about the past several months after a tenure at 4704 Montrose, the home of Luigi’s for much of the 1950s.
 
1964 – The second of three, entirely unrelated Italian-themed restaurants named Nino’s opens at 7404 Greenbriar at S. Main, not too far from the soon-to-finished Astrodome, related to the family operating Del Monico’s. The menu includes “spaghetti, pizza, veal scallopini, beef canneloni [sic] and other popular Italian items.”
 
1964 – In late October the Post writes, “For years the name Vallone has been synonymous with good Italian food in Houston. Young Tony Vallone is keeping up this tradition admirably with his Sorrento restaurant.”

1965 – Joe DiMaggio’s reopens, after its last location fell to the creation of the Southwest Freeway. “One of the most cosmopolitan dining spots in Houston” with “imported candles from Italy,” according to the Houston Chronicle dining columnist. The new address is 3795 Richmond, now nearly across the street from Costco.

1965 – In March, Tony’s from Tony Vallone, Sr. – formerly known as simply Tony Vallone – and his 21-year-old son, Tony Vallone, Jr., opens as a casual Italian restaurant at 2716 Sage Road near where the Galleria would be constructed in a few years. It’s reported that Sorrento was leased to another operator and the two Vallone’s will devote all their time to the new Tony’s, which is later described as, “a place that was fun to visit, with good food and drink, dancing….”  The opening chef is French-born Edmund Foulard, who would later have success and local acclaim beginning the next year with his own French and Continental restaurants.
 
1965 – Employing a name found for Italian restaurants around the country, Venetian Gardens opens on the 7000 block of Fannin near both the Shamrock Hotel and the new domed stadium. Owner Frank LaRatta “really emphasizes family dining in the cozy spot. He has all the popular man-size Italian platters,” according the dining columnist in the Houston Post the next year. It advertises serving spaghetti, pizza, and lasagna. With its location, it becomes a popular stop for visiting entertainers and athletes, both local and from out of town. In a few years, recently retired Houston Oiler, Tom Regner, becomes one of the owners. Regner was a consensus all-American at guard at Notre Dame and its last player to start both ways. A first round draft choice by the Oilers, he played for six seasons for the team until injuries ended his career at age 29. The restaurant will move out to Murphy Road in Stafford in the mid-1970s.
 
1967 – Just east of Kirby in the Rice Village, Vittorio’s opens at 2529 Rice Boulevard from Vittorio Assandri, a native of Genoa with a doctorate in economics, who has had Vic’s Village Cafeteria next door for the past decade or so. Lea Giordano, a native of Florence and veteran of other local restaurants, heads the kitchen for the first half-dozen years, into her seventies, and is “one of the very few female Executive Chefs in this country.” Several of Assandri’s family members provide much of the rest of the staff, and it quickly becomes a favorite of the Houston Chronicle’s dining columnist, helping her fill space for years. The restaurant serves the familiar Italian dishes necessary for successful restaurant while becoming known for its “famous milk fed veal dishes” and even more so, its shrimp scampi. But there also items from Assandri’s home city and elsewhere north of the Mezzogiorno, like pasta with pesto, lasagna with bechamel, and osso buco; even later, also from the other side of the Alps. Lebanese immigrant Fred Kalil becomes the maitre’d after a few years and later opens a popular long-time restaurant on Westheimer under his given name, Fuad’s. Vittorio’s closes in 1978.
 
1969 – Near the eastern edge of Westheimer in January, Michelangelo opens. Maybe somewhat exotic at first, it continued in business for over four decades later, known for its comfortable Italian-American fare and vaguely romantic setting.
 
1969 – The April 19 issue of Billboard reports, “Tony Bennett Spaghetti House…the first of the restaurants is scheduled to open in Houston in early August. Five additional units will open in the same city before the end of the year, with dozens more planned in other cities for early 1970.” At least one did open, briefly, in Town & Country where, “the food was…was very bland,” recalled a rare patron. Another oddity is “Mama Benedetto’s, Texas State Hotel, 720 Fannin…a supper club that features an Italian feast, cheek-to-cheek dance music and name Vegas acts,” run by the singer’s brother, John that opened in 1974. With downtown and then the hotel becoming more derelict during the 1970s, this venture also has a short tenure.
 
The songs of the popular Italian-American singers interpreting the Great American Songbook after the Second World War are a requisite part of the ambiance of Italian-themed restaurants in this country. From that group, oddly, more than Tony Bennett had ties to the city. Vic Damone lived here for years after marrying an oil heiress, and two of three of Frank Sinatra’s kids were married to Houstonians, at least for a short amount of time. Nancy Sinatra married singer Tommy Sands – who attended Lanier Junior High and then Lamar High School – in 1960. Frank Sinatra, Jr. married a Houston-area lawyer in 1998. Plus, one of Dean Martin’s very best songs is his 1965 recording of “Houston.” It might be hard to envision Dino going back to Houston, though.
 
1969 – Columnist Bill Roberts in the Post notes about “The emergence of Tony’s Restaurant…As one of the spots where the elite met to eat.”
 
1970 – As the city moves westward, Pino’s follows. It moves to Hilcroft and Westheimer. Its success allows it to eventually grow to four times the capacity of the original.
 
1971 – Antonio’s Flying Pizza opens in 1971 by Sicilian immigrants Aldo, Anthony and Giovanni Rosa serving pizza and assertive Italian-American red sauce classics, and proving that this formula with competent hands in the kitchen still works well after fifty-plus years.
 
1971 – In November, Salvatore’s opens in an attractive old mansion at 4002 Montrose at Branard, which has been a restaurant and club since the early 1960s. It’s from the Nizza family originally from Sciacca in southern Sicily, siblings Salvatore, Rino, Lino, and Anna Maria along with their mother, Giuseppina, who makes the desserts including cannoli, of course. A relaxed place on a couple levels, the restaurant has pleasant, umbrella-laden sidewalk dining and live piano entertainment. The menu is mostly familiar Italian-American items but with the cannelloni, ravioli and manicotti, house-made. “A specialty is milk-fed veal prepared seven different ways.” Another is the dessert coffee, an alcoholic and whipped cream concoction prepared table-side. Entrées are served with salad, spaghetti and garlic bread. It opens a second branch on FM 1960 in 1975, but shutters on Montrose after almost exactly a decade.
 
1972 – In his November 4 dining column in the Houston Post, Vince Gargotta announces a special dinner at Tony’s and it is seemingly the last time the name Tony Vallone, Jr. appears in print. Hence forward, it is simply Tony Vallone.
 
1974 – With the catchphrase, “a great Italian restaurant…with a heck of an Irish bar,” Birraporetti’s opens on West Gray near River Oaks. Though hardly the former, and more accurately the latter. It’s a fun and useful place, dishing functional, familiar Italian-American items that expands to the downtown theater district, the Galleria area, and even sunny Orange County, California. That last location closes in 1998 not long after losing a $2.3 million sexual harassment lawsuit brought by two former waitresses. Birraporetti’s is still around, adjacent to the Alley Theatre and with a branch down in Friendswood. The marriage of concepts was the product of a very common marriage in Roman Catholic parishes in much of the country, of the founders, Michael Horan and Shirley Gaudino, Irish- and Italian-Americans.
 
1974 – In their November issue, Texas Monthly reports that "Tony's [is]our nomination for the city's best restaurant… [with] trout Veronique… Chauteaubriand…. Souffle" as it advertises itself as serving the "Poetry of French Food."  Vallone's heart seems to remain with the vibrant culinary verse of the Belpaese, though.

1975 – Cajoled by Houston socialite Maxine Van Dusen, Sergio Ballatori, whose family had run a restaurant in Rome between the main train station and the Trevi Fountain – a track heavily trafficked with tourists, for four decades – moves to the Bayou City to open Ballatori’s at 4215 Leeland in November in a recently occupied bank building east of downtown. Aptly aided by his wife, five children and parents, Ballatori features Roman and Italian dishes like saltimbocca alla Romana, the fresh pasta tonnarelli alla carbonara, and risotto alla Milanese along with sought-after tables set inside a spacious steel bank vault.
 
1975 – “Wig exec Chris Arno” opens the 75-seat Arno’s well-off the beaten restaurant path at 5212 Cedar in Bellaire in June with Arno reportedly doing the cooking at the start. Operations quickly turn to Arno’s stepdaughter, Janice Beeson, Michael Stein and Pancho Garrison, the last a Rice graduate raised in Rome, who brings culinary ideas from his time there. Houston Chronicle dining columnist Mary K. is smitten, calling it “one of the most exciting discoveries in the past year.” She enjoys the spinach gnocchi, saltimbocca all Romana, linguine, house-made varioli – ravioli, which was somehow misspelled in two different columns – and some not-so-Italian items, Tournedos Rossini, and a “chicken breast sauteed in butter and cooked in brandy and heavy whipping cream.”
 
1976 – In January Star Pizza fires up its pizza oven for the first time. Its thick-crust pizzas – not really the Chicago-style deep dish as advertised – are arguably the best in the city at the time, and quickly become a favorite with the college-age customers.
 
1976 – The February issue of Texas Monthly decries that “it is disappointing that there is such a dearth of authentic offerings in the restaurants of Texas.” No kidding. There was a dearth in nearly all of the country then, too. The author goes on the write that “Dallasites have the best selection of good Italian restaurants in Texas,” and that “good food doesn’t seem to be a requisite for success in Houston.” The wine lists throughout also draw scorn, offering just Chianti and maybe Valpolicella, Bardolino, and Soave. He does praise Renata’s at 2006 Lexington, which opened in 1974, and Matranga’s. The former is lauded for the “Chicken Renata stuffed with ham and cheese,” a dish found nowhere in Italy. He also mentions that Tony’s, which “can’t be called an Italian restaurant, does serve specialties like osso buco and the best veal piccata I’ve eaten.”
 
1977 – Nash D’Amico – who had recently run an Italian restaurant in Huntsville, and helped significantly by his cousin Damian Mandola – opens “something new and exciting for Houston,” D’Amico’s at 2407 Westheimer east of Kirby. It is known for dishes like frutti di mare salad, fried calamari, and tortellini in a cream sauce. Several years later, still “one of the busiest restaurants in Houston,” Texas Monthly describes it as “the first sumptuous Italian restaurant in Texas.”
 
1977 – In a small house on W. Dallas – a few blocks west of an area once rife with Italian grocers – Vincent Mandola opens Nino’s which will grow into a two-block compound over the years. Greatly inspired by the cooking of their mother, Grace, the three Mandola brothers, Vincent, Tony and Damian, will go on to open many of Houston’s most popular restaurants: Nino’s (Vincent), Tony Mandola’s Gulf Coast Kitchen (Tony), Damian’s (Damian), Carrabba’s (Damian), Vincent’s (Vincent), Pesce (Damian) and Pronto (Vincent). This Nino’s is the third Italian restaurant in Houston bearing that name, none related to the other.
 
1978 – Quaint Arno’s is awarded a star by Texas Monthly in its roundup of restaurants, one of only four so accoladed in the Houston section. This is even after chef Pancho Garrison’s departure. Praised in the magazine in the past for the “good taste to explore facets of Italian cuisines heretofore unknown in Houston,” with many Northern Italian-inspired offerings including house-made pastas, veal kidneys and pesto. Also noted for its seafood from beyond the Gulf, including mussels, and for an appetizer of mushrooms caps stuffed with the minced stems, onion, cream cheese and dill, from a recipe in Gourmet. Arno’s becomes known as a “a decidedly upscale Italian restaurant of good food and mighty pretentions” and in 1980 still “one of our town’s outstanding Italian restaurants,” according to the Houston Chronicle.
 
Stuffed Mushrooms. The last time I had stuffed mushrooms was at a tired Italian-American restaurant in Arlington, Texas over two decades ago. I found just a handful of recipes for it in a number of Italian cookbooks I have, and I don’t remember ever having the dish or seeing it on a menu in fifteen trips to Italy. But for maybe forty years or so, stuffed mushrooms were a dish that many local Italian restaurants were known for. “Sam’s famed stuffed mushrooms” at Luigi’s drew a mention in the mid-1950s, as did La Via on lower Westheimer for its “divine stuffed mushrooms” in the mid-1970s . Azzarelli’s, Sorrento, Salvatore’s, Dante’s, Vittorio’s, and Bertolotti’s were others where stuffed mushrooms were a specialty over the years. Not sure what most restaurants used to stuff the mushrooms – just “Italian style” was a common description – but at Salvatore’s in the 1970s, it was “veal and drenched in a delectable burgundy sauce” and crabmeat later became popular, it seems. Crabmeat usually a good choice for most dishes.

1978 – Destined to become a favorite of astronauts and other NASA personnel, Frenchie’s in a dumpy strip center in Clear Lake opens by the Camera brothers from the isle of Capri. Though misleading, the owners decide to keep the name of the previous establishment. Its counter service at lunch – and usually packed – while full service in the evening.
 
1978 – The faccia di vecchia dish served at Mandola’s Deli that opens near the University of Houston takes its name from its likeness to the gnarled face of an old woman. It is a version of the sfincione, a focaccia-esque dish from the Palermo area, the progenitor of the square Sicilian pizza.
 
1981 – Carmelo’s opens on Memorial near Dairy Ashford in west Houston. Carmelo Mauro, a native of the beautiful resort town of Taormina in eastern Sicily, brings Continental-inflected and well-executed Italian-American dishes that quickly become a hit and expands to Austin in a few years, a city then with a complete absence in decent Italian cooking, which I was to learn moving there a few years later.
 
1982 – Arno’s moves into Salvatore’s old space at 4002 Montrose. Whatever inconsistencies existed in the kitchen and with service seemed to grow at the new location and the restaurant only gets notice for its schedule of live entertainment. It closes in 1993, as “health and age forces [us] to retire” according to a sales notice in the Chronicle.
 
1982 – In the March issue of Texas Monthly is an article about Italian dining in Texas. It lists D’Amico’s and Villani at 2907 West Alabama as two of the three best Italian restaurants in the state. The reviewer thought important to add that “it seems that Dallas doesn’t need any more Italian restaurants, it just needs a few good Italian cooks.”
 
1982 – Sonny Bono – an Italian-American singer like Tony Bennett, if without the talent – opens an Italian restaurant called Bono’s on Woodway between Post Oak and Sage. A branch of his West Hollywood original, it lasts for several years.
 
1982 – In the fall of this year Carlo Molinaro, a native of the Verona area, starts a quaint restaurant called La Trattoria on Westheimer just east of Voss. Serving broadly northern Italian trattoria classics along with American-friendly items like garlic bread, fettuccine Alfredo and cream-laden veal scaloppine, the restaurant is maddeningly inconsistent until its close at the end of 2010. Delighting regular patrons – including many ex-pats from Italy – it is too often indifferent in terms of both cooking and service.
 
1982 – Achille Epifani, originally from Taranto in the heel of Italy’s boot, opens Achille’s on Memorial between Wilcrest and Kirkwood. Having once cooked at the famed Giambelli’s on 50th in Manhattan – which trained many successful New York restaurateurs – he brings a customer-pleasing sense to his usually full-flavored preparations. It remains a neighborhood favorite for over fifteen years before Epifani decides to down-scale to a fast-casual operation and move a couple miles west to Eldridge.
 
1983 – In the fall, John Flowers, originally from the Chicago area, opens Kenneally’s Irish Pub, a neighborhood Irish bar, on Shepherd north of Westheimer. It, surprisingly, serves pizza, excellent pizza – a cracker-thin-crust that’s cut into squares and vaguely Neapolitan in heritage. This was the original type of pizza served in Chicago, well before the advent of the deep-dish. Its pizza-maker trained at the acclaimed Vito & Nick’s in southwestern Chicago, a bastion of this style. After the initial principals passed on in the 2010s, the pizza and kitchen becomes a shadow of what it once was.
 
1982 – Tony Mandola opens his self-named Gulf Coast Kitchen, his second restaurant at 1602 Shepherd. In early 1988, it moves to much nicer digs the River Oaks Shopping Center on West Gray. Best described as a regional seafood restaurant, it does serve some unique and popular items that combine Italian-American cooking with regional ingredients and flavors.
 
1982 – Antonio Mingalone, a native of Basilicata in southern Italy, opens Montesano at 6009 Beverly Hill, aptly near Richmond and Fountain View, as the restaurant features a fountain inside. Texas Monthly quickly took note and Montesano will improve and become one of the city’s top Italian restaurants with influences from around that country geared toward the local clientele.
 
1983 – In the review of the restaurant Romero’s in March, the “professional restaurant critic” of the Houston Chronicle opines about the types of local Italian-themed dining options that he believes is found here. “There is Trendy Italian. That fits such places as Arno’s of Bellaire, now of Montrose. There is Gourmet Italian, such as the Green Pepper in Bellaire. Also Down-Home Italian a la Nino’s, Family Italian such as is offered by Ballatori’s, Basic Italian at Joe Matranga’s, and Junk Italian, at any franchise pizza spot.” Italian-American would be a far more accurate descriptor than Italian.
 
1984 – In a survey of nearly 1,000 Houston Post readers, the most popular Italian restaurants are: D’Amico’s, Birraporretti’s, Nino’s, and Bono’s.

1985 – Following up the popularity of D’Amico’s, Nash D’Amico’s Pasta & Clam Bar opens at 2421 in the heart of the Rice Village. Nicely tiled and adorned with glass bricks 80s-popular neons, the Italian-American offerings skew toward pastas and Gulf seafood and Texas Monthly commented that it “still draws the trendy crowd” a few years after opening. It lasts for a decade there expanding to the Galleria area, Galveston and Clear Lake.

1985 – In their April issue, Texas Monthly notes that, “Joe Matranga, Owner of Texas’ Best Spaghetti Joint, gives out free postcards of himself as a valiant Greek warrior impaled on a bloody spear,” something he has done for years – odd but eye-catching – in awarding it the Best Restaurant Postcard, a time when postcards printed by restaurants for take-away were a thing.
 
1985 – On Smith Street in what would be called Midtown, Damian, Frankie and Vincent Mandola along with Ciro Lampasas and Johnny Carrabba, Sr., open Damian’s in the fall serving more refined and better executed Italian-American cooking with a Gulf Coast touch. Withe Damian Mandola leading the kitchen, it is soon to become one of Houston’s best-loved restaurants.
 
1986 – Ciro Lampasas opens his eponymous restaurant, Ciro’s, on the north side of I-10 at Campbell that becomes a Spring Branch favorite.
 
1986 – Aldo Cantania opens La Strada on a dicey stretch of Westheimer in Montrose. The California-style Italian food never draws raves, but its wild Sunday brunch becomes an institution. A second location opens in 1996 in the Galleria area. A fire shutters the original in 2002. It reopens in 2004, but never regained its former popularity. Both are closed by spring 2009.
 
1986 – Damian Mandola and his nephew, Johnny C. Carrabba III – the son of one Mandola's partners at Damian's, who will be much better known as Johnny Carrabba – open Carrabba’s on the site of a former adult bookstore on Kirby north of Richmond in December and not far south from River Oaks. The restaurant is more casual than Damian’s, with the most expensive item on the menu is a steak at $9.95. The robust, familiar southern Italian-American fare with some nods to the pair’s Sicilian roots is done very adeptly. The food, the value, the attentive service, and invariably lively atmosphere quickly resonate with Houstonians and becomes a local favorite. It will quickly earn customers who will be regulars for decades.
 
1986 – Anthony’s on Montrose just south of the Southwest Freeway from Tony Vallone opens as slightly less stuffy and more Italian-oriented than his flagship Tony’s. Esquire magazine lauds that “the antipasti are fresh and bright, and the pastas…are the best in the city,” and names it one of the country’s top newcomers. The author of the piece, John Mariani, also cites it as the “best value” fine-dining Italian restaurant in America in the USA Today also that year.
 
1987 – Backstreet Café’s Tracy Vaught invests in Prego, a failing restaurant in the Rice Village. It is one of the scores of restaurants nationwide that had used Wolfgang Puck’s Spago in Los Angeles as its inspiration. The next year it becomes Italian-themed, more competent, and a favorite of the nearby soon-to-be-booming West University and Southampton neighborhoods. Vaught would go on to be one of the city's most successful restaurateurs with her future husband, chef Hugo Ortega.
 
1987 – Tucked away, away, in the neighborhood just two blocks from Carrabba’s on Kirby, Bertolotti opens, the second restaurant from Italian natives Stefano and Nella Bertolotti, who have one in Friendswood, Pontillo. Bertolotti offers many popular dishes inspired from much of Italy, and also specials like sweetbreads, beef tongue, and rabbit, most created to a robust effect. And cream sauces abound, not unusual for the time. All entrées are accompanied with a dressing-heavy salad, featuring Romaine, and garlic bread. The restaurant is open for decade and then the Bertolotti’s turn their attention back south with Babbo Bruno in a couple of locations that get some critical notice. Later, seemingly as fans of The Sopranos, they open Bada Bing! Pizzeria in League City.
 
1988 – In January, due to the phenomenal success of its Kirby original in the past year, Carrabba’s opens a second location near Briargrove on Voss near San Felipe. Proprietor Johnny Carrabba's mother, Rose Carrabba, becomes its presiding matriarch, a role she will fill for decades.
 
1988 – Augie Vasquez, a native of Argentina who had worked with Nash D’Amico, opens Augie’s at 5901 Westheimer at Fountain View. Drawing on his Italian heritage and restaurant experience, he serves dishes found infrequently in Houston, including some of the over thirty pastas and an excellent version of mozzarella in carozza dished from an open kitchen. Though the Houston Chronicle’s review noted that “this is one of those rare Italian restaurants where the meat and fish dishes rival the pastas,” the restaurant does not last but a couple of years.
 
1988 – The November issue of Texas Monthly raves about Damian’s grilled quail on polenta and its “fettuccine in Alfredo sauce adorned with dandelions… [with] moist grilled boned chicken breast.”  It garners two stars (out of three) making it one of the top seven restaurants in the state according to the magazine.
 
1989 – Tony Vallone opens Neapolitan-spiced Grotto in January. The food is excellent; not really authentically Italian, but the execution and ingredients are top-notch. The flavors are properly distinct and vibrant, more so Italian, southern Italian, rather than typically Italian-American. The exuberant setting and scene rival the food. The restaurant is notable also for introducing to locals the Sardinian flatbread pane carasau as part of its copious complimentary bread basket and bellinis, that classic first concocted in the famed Harry’s Bar in Venice. John Mariani in Esquire in November writes that Grotto, “a wide-open trattoria that is not only great fun but that also serves up an uncompromised southern Italian menu unique in the country….This is one of those restaurants completely expressive of its owner’s personality, and its significance cannot be underestimated. Indeed, Grotto is my pick for Restaurant of the Year.” A Houston Italian restaurant is named as the best new restaurant in the country, and by an Italian-American from New York.
 
1991 – On Lovett just off Montrose, Lynette Hawkins, an alumna of Damian's and Carrabba's, opens La Mora, occupying the spot of another Italian restaurant, Villa Borghese. Hawkins had lived in Florence and La Mora is the first of the area’s Tuscan-themed restaurants that really strikes a chord among Houston diners. Not that long after opening, Nation’s Restaurant News writes that some "of La Mora's staples are fish grilled over oak and pecan woods and rotisserie-roasted chicken and pork loin." Esquire names it among the top new restaurants in country. 
 
1991 – Pino Luongo, the New York restaurateur that helped introduce and popularize Tuscan food in this country beginning in New York the 1980s, opens a restaurant in the Galleria near the pricey Barney’s spot in August. Texas Monthly wrote a few months later that, “the most sophisticated Houston Tuscan restaurant is the largely undiscovered Piccola Cucina.” Unfortunately, it remained that way and shuttered after a not-too-long tenure. It was probably the most truly Italian restaurant in Houston to that point.
 
1991 – Tony Vallone opens La Griglia on West Gray just east of River Oaks in the fall. Esquire names it a best new restaurant in the country soon after opening citing a menu where “from top to bottom you’ll want to try everything on it,” and its “irresistible dolce vita.” Less Neapolitan and maybe less Italian than his Grotto, it is similarly boisterous and stylishly casual, and quickly becomes a place for socialites and politicians. The restaurant scene remarkably remains so, two decades, and a change of ownership later.
 
1992 – In January, the unpretentious Buca di Bacco opens, dedicated to well-prepared Neapolitan-style pasta dishes and somewhat odd, but popular, baked casserole creations. Set in a corner of the Pennzoil Building and across from Jones Hall downtown, it will be one of the surest bets for dining downtown and good call before the symphony or another performance in Theater District. Its owner, Vittorio Preteroti, is a native of the isle of Capri and related to the family that runs Frenchie’s in Clear Lake.
 
1992 – The first area Romano’s Macaroni Grill from Brinker International opens at 5802 Westheimer and is a hit. The very quaffable jug wines sold on the honor is a big reason, helping it last for a couple of decades. The chain began in Leon Springs, outside of San Antonio, in 1988.
 
1992 – In December two chefs from the famous Cipriani Hotel in Venice open Torcello at 2300 Westheimer, east of Kirby. Taking the name of the island in the lagoon where the hotel is located, its Venetian-inspired cuisine – including Harry’s Bar classics – is some of the very best Italian food that has ever been served in Houston, and its interior wins a local design award. The restaurant lasts for about a year-and-a-half, closing in 1994. It could be the address, as Armando's, Dish, Two Chefs Bistro, Beso, and most recently a’Bouzy – to name most of the ones which followed, most having abbreviated tenures.
 
1993 – In April Outback Steakhouse purchased a 50 percent stake in the cash flows of the two Carrabba's restaurants and entered into a 50-50 joint venture with the founders, Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola, to develop new locations. Houston’s version of Italian-American food and hospitality is poised to spread nationally. From soon after this, as most Houston restaurant-goers know, but it bears mentioning, the first two Carrabba’s locations – now just owned by Johnny Carrabba and family – are much better than the nationwide Carrabba’s Grill outposts.
 
1993 – The Leading Italian Restaurants of the United States by Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani, which promotes “the highest traditions of Italian cuisine” in this country, includes Tony’s, the only entry for a restaurant in Texas.
 
1994 – Using a far cheaper and less competent designer than Anthony’s and a great many restaurnats – the odd Il Dio di Vin’ opens on the 7600 block of the Katy Freeway. The stuccoed interior is meant to resemble a grotto setting, but harkens more to the caves described in the depressing Christ Stopped at Eboli. The menu is entirely in some southern Italian dialect – Neapolitan, I believe – and the food is a mix of Italian-American and Neapolitan dishes done a little differently. The wine is inexpensive; the food is moderately priced, robustly flavored, and usually terrific, especially the pasta dishes.
 
1994 – Nearby, also on the Katy Freeway, Tony Mandola's Family Table. It served giant Italian-American dishes meant for several, and meant to be like “going to grandma's house for Sunday dinner,” provided she was first- or second-generation southern Italian or Sicilian. The concept did not work for Houston, and it changed into another Blue Oyster Bar, which remained until the freeway expansion chased it north.
 
1994 – Anthony’s reopens at 4007 Westheimer in Highland Village, though it is not as Italian as it once was. The oft-decadent Italian-scented veal dishes remain excellent, though. If not quite new, at least renewed, it is named a top new restaurant in the country by Esquire magazine in October, reprising this award from 1986.
 
1995 – In January, Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola purchased Outback’s shares in the original two Carrabba’s and modified the terms of the expansion agreement. The numerous Carrabba-named outlets grow to over 230 during the next fifteen years while the two initial locations remain amazingly popular.

1996 – Aldo's, with seven tables, opens at 219 Westheimer from Aldo El Sharif, who was the chef at Buttarazzi's on FM 1960. Born in Cairo to a Sicilian mother and then raised in Milan, the restaurant will earn critical praise locally for Sharif's rich, personal cooking that draws inspirations beyond the borders of Italy. The acclaim will include the highest rating, three stars, from the Houston Chronicle in a few years. The restaurant garners attention for its romantic setting, extensive menu and wine lists, plus prices that invariably run high.
 
1996 – Thai-born Somchai Rapesak who had cooked for La Strada for nearly a decade opens Crostini in a small house on Shepherd north of Westheimer early in the year. It grows to incorporate the then-trendy Southwestern ingredients and Thai flavors into American Italian cooking that works quite well. The restaurant has a successful dozen-year run.
 
1996 – In March, two local Italian restaurant stars, Damian Mandola of Damian’s and Carrabba’s, and Lynette Hawkins of La Mora marry, though the union doesn’t last.
 
1996 – Deep in the heat and humidity of August, Arcodoro opens in the Galleria area. The elegant spot quickly becomes regarded as one of the best Sardinian-focused restaurant in the country – not that there are too many. Its Seadas Al Miele dessert, puff pastry filled with sweetened cheese, fried and drizzled with bitter honey, is “perhaps the oldest dessert in the world” according to an Italian food authority. It is just one of the unique delights on the menu which also includes Houston’s introduction to bottarga, the preserved fish roe from the gray mullet, a distinctive ingredient in coastal Sardinian cooking, that adorns pastas.
 
1996 – Nash D’Amico opens D'Amico's Italian Market Café on Morningside in the Rice Village that is both a market and café, or restaurant more properly. The casual place, with red checkered tablecloths adorning tables near shelves filled with grocery items and featuring Italian-American favorites and popular restaurant items along with regional favorite, crawfish ravioli, quickly resonate with the neighborhood that misses his long-running place around the corner. It expands in 2011 to the Heights and 2013 to Katy, if each for just a few years.

1996 – Villa Capri in Clear Lake – run by the family that owns nearby Frenchie’s – hosts the Italian head of state, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who was visiting NASA.
 
1997 – In an April 11 review in the Houston Chronicle, Alex Truex writes, “Houston is blessed, but also cursed, by its plethora of upscale Italian restaurants,” proving definitively that he was not in the same vein of future local restaurant critics, Robb Walsh and Alison Cook.
 
1997 – The restaurant with a bank vault run by a family from Rome, Ballatori’s, closes after a two-decade run.
 
1998 – In April the Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” pokes fun at the name of the long-running Houston restaurant Crapitto’s, located on Mid Lane near Highland Village. It is the last name of the owner, by the way.
 
1998 – In the summer of 1998 Aldo El Sharif of the extravagant Aldo's – along with Marco Wiles – opens a wine bar called Osteria D'Aldo at 301 Main downtown, a lonely outpost, which proved not ready for the concept.
 
1998 – Husband and wife Bernand and Kathy Petronella open Paulie’s, named after their son, on Westheimer across from Lanier Middle School. It serves a crowd-pleasing menu long on sandwiches, hot and cold, leafy salads, Italian-American dishes, and cookies in a comfortable space done via counter-service. A second location on Holcombe opens and closes in the next decade and then Camerata, one of Houston’s most serious wine bars, in the space adjacent in 2013.
 
1998 – From two cousins born in Calabria and veterans of New York City-area pizzerias, Romano’s Pizza opens in a retail center on West Gray near Waugh. Serving Italian-American standards like manicotti, eggplant Parmesan and chicken Francese, and sandwiches, along with the pies all via gruff counter service, this becomes a favorite of transplants from the New York area looking for a taste of pizza they grew up with.
 
1998 – With skilled Alberto Baffoni a native of the Marche in central Italy manning the kitchen, Simposio opens on Richmond and Chimney Rock. It is named as one of the top new restaurants in the country by Esquire that fall: “Before you judge Italian cuisine in America against its Old World counterpart, let Baffoni serve you his grilled calamari with tomato fillet dressed simply with lemon; his hand-rolled strozzapreti (“priest strangler”) noodles with sausage, spinach, and roast peppers; glorious trout cooked gently in white wine; breaded lamb chops with sweet-and-sour shallots.” Simposio takes its name from the Michelin-starred Symposium in Carteceto in the Marche region where Baffoni had worked. Along with the opening of Arcodoro, it harkens the advent of a new professionalism in the kitchens of Italian restaurants in Houston and more truly Italian cooking.
 
1999 – In July of 1999 the Houston Chronicle lauds La Griglia in a review, as “Marco Wiles brings glory back to the kitchen.” It is planned as a short time gig.
 
1999 – Arcodoro is awarded three stars out of four by famed Italian journalist Luigi Veronelli and his team in The Best Italian Restaurants in America. Barely more than twenty other Italian restaurants in the country are rated as high.
 
1999 – Also that year, another Italian publication, the magazine La Cucina Italiana has a feature article about Tony Vallone citing him as one of the Southwest's best-known Italian food gurus.
 
1999 – In his annual roundup of best new restaurants across the country, John Mariani in Esquire accolades Alex Truex in the Houston Chronicle with The Mayor Giuliani Award for Hick Journalism for the line: “The menu will make a New Yorker wince: foie gras for $22.50, shrimp with risotto for $16.50 . . . Most dinner entrees cost more than $20.” Houston is still not yet the restaurant city it will become.
 
2000 –In January divino on West Alabama near Dunlavy opens. Though as much a wine bar at first – and a place with intelligently chosen and well-priced wines, largely from Italy – it can probably lay claim to being Houston’s first trattoria. It serves basic, proficient cooking that aims for true Italian sensibilities, inspired by Emilia-Romagna.
 
2000 – In March Marco Wiles – who had worked locally for Tony Vallone, Antonio Mingalone and Aldo El Sharif – opens Da Marco, which sports an unusually all-Italian wine list, and is to become one of the most lauded Italian restaurants in Houston’s dining history.
 
2000 – Both Tony Vallone for Tony’s, and Alberto Baffoni of Simposio have recipes featured in John Mariani’s The Italian-American Cookbook published in 2000 that highlighted Italian-American standards and broadly Italian dishes from well-known chefs like Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud and Ming Tsai. Vallone’s recipe is Capellini with Calamari and Shrimp (page 146); Baffoni’s is Potato Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Ragù (page 196), “one of his masterful dishes,” according to the author. Future Houston restaurateur Piero Selvaggio also has a recipe, Risotto with Corn (page 217).
 
2000 – Tucked between the 610 feeder and the Galleria, under the glare of the Williams Tower, Piatto from John Marion Carrabba opens. It serves most of the Italian-American favorites geared to the locale – plus plenty of Gulf shrimp preparations along with grilled meats, and pizzas – that will make it a comfortable choice for many diners for years. Its take on Damian’s Asparagus Mike Wells, crispy asparagus topped with lump crab meat and a lemony butter sauce, is a very popular way to start. The sauces for the pastas are mostly red and white, and a area-popular pink, tomato cream. Chicken takes precedence over veal for the larger items.
 
2001 – Damian Mandola and Johnny Carrabba were asked to host the fourth season of the nationally syndicated PBS series “Cucina Amore.” It spawns the cookbook, Ciao Y’All, possibly the closest tome that describes the Italian-themed cooking here. The hosts’ ebullient and irreverent style are such a hit they film two additional series featuring the cooking of Sicily and Tuscany – and companion cookbooks – in 2003 and 2004.
 
2001 – Just a year after it opens, talented sommelier Antonio Gianola joins Da Marco. He expands and greatly improves the all-Italian wine list to include a diverse, complementary and intriguing array of finds that help make the restaurant even more commendable. Gianola later goes on to Catalan as one of the opening partners helping to turn that into one of the city’s most exciting restaurants with Chris Shepherd heading the kitchen.
 
2001 – Vincent Mandola of Nino’s – and Vincent’s, Grappino di Nino and later Pronto – is featured preparing his Veal Vincent on Food Finds on the Food Network.

2002 – In January, following a reported $3 million remodel of the space of the well-regarded but stale French-themed DeVille, the restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel downtown is reborn as Quattro, a contemporary Italian restaurant. The talented Tim Keating still heads the kitchen. He recently spent months at the landmark Four Seasons property in Milan to prepare for the change, and Quattro is one of the most authentic Italians in the city. Alison Cook writes a review in the Houston Chronicle a few months after opening that “it's the best place downtown by a long shot.”

2002 – Ravioli Arcodoro from Arcodoro wins an international ravioli competition. Remaining on the menu throughout the restaurant’s tenure, these are good-sized ravioli filled with minced shrimp and scallops, wine must then finished with a flavorful seafood reduction.
 
2003 – Formerly just a wholesaler and a gelato maker to area restaurants, Nundini’s on N. Shepherd become known also as a retail import shop, sandwich purveyor and Houston’s first notable outlet for gelato and sorbetto.
 
2003 – In November Tilman Fertitta’s Landry Group purchases La Griglia and the two Grotto restaurants from Tony Vallone. That deal seems to stipulate that Vallone divest himself all but one restaurant. The Landry organization subsequently preserves these once interesting spots in amber, but both remain popular, if with an eventually less discriminating group of patrons.

2003 – The chain Buca di Beppo pays the quaint Buca di Bacco in downtown Houston to change its name. It becomes Perbacco and is still open with Vittorio Preteroti at the helm.
 
2004 – Damian’s caters the All Star game held in Houston providing Italian food for Joe Torre and others while serving Caribbean-style food to the numerous Latin ballplayers on the American League roster.

2004 –  Aldo's on lower Westheimer closes in the summer after an eight-year run. The quaint restaurant had sported the romantic, or cheesy, moniker Aldo's con Amore in its last few years.
 
2005 – Appropriately relocated to the former site of Maxim’s – once “the secure haven of the River Oaks plutocracy” – and featuring contemporary artwork from likes of the acclaimed Texas-bred artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jesus Moroles, Tony’s is named among the top new restaurants in the country by Esquire magazine. The French executive chef with the tough-to-pronounce Polish last name, Olivier Ciesielski – “the best chef Tony’s ever had” according the article – directs a kitchen staff that is capable of creating excellent Italian food.
 
2006 – In January, Marco Wiles’ Dolce Vita opens on lower Westheimer. Seemingly using Mario Batali’s Otto in Manhattan as a template, Wiles goes far beyond that with his Italian-style pizzas fired in a wood-burning oven using a range of toppings inspired throughout the peninsula. It is easily the best pizzeria in Houston and encounters no serious contenders for years before closing.
 
2006 – Gourmet Sardinia, an outlet for high quality Sardinian food products, is launched by Arcodoro’s owners Efisio and Lori Farris. The online shop offers artisanal products from Farris’ homeland that are quite different than those found in the typical Italian-American pantry. Bottarga, bitter honey and saba are a few of the high-end items that also include wine and olive oils.
 
2006 – The October edition of Gourmet listed Da Marco at number 29 among their list of top 50 restaurants in the country. Only three other Italians are placed higher – Babbo in New York, Vetri in Philadelphia, and Bartolotta di Mare in Las Vegas – not bad company, at all.
 
2007 – Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean Flavors of Sardinia from Efisio Farris of Arcodoro is published. It is likely the first Sardinian cookbook published in English. The New York Times listed it among “25 noteworthy cookbooks published in 2007.’’
 
2007 – Late in the year Ristorante Cavour opens in developer Giorgio Borlenghi’s posh Hotel Granduca. The executive chef is a Frenchman, David Denis, of the well-regarded Le Mistral on the west side. He infuses the flavors similar to his native Provence and Liguria to create a broadly northern Italian array of very well-crafted dishes. He proves that the French culinary tradition of stock-making marries well with Milanese-style risotto. The restaurant also makes a terrific gnocchi, albeit gnocchi parisienne. The restaurant takes its moniker from Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, one of the principal architects of Italian unification in 1861 that followed the conquest of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and its incorporation into Cavour’s Turin-based Kingdom of Sardinia and the creation of the modern Italian state.
 
2007 – The site where La Mora sits is sold and this Montrose favorite closes.
 
2008 – In an article entitled “The Best U.S. Italian Restaurants” in the April issue of Forbes Traveler, John Mariani names Tony’s among the top dozen or so Italian eateries in the country. He writes, “in its new location, Tony's plays to a younger crowd that comes for rigorously authentic Italian regional cuisine and great wines.” Not that much younger of a crowd.
 
2008 – Also in April, Andrea Pintus, the longtime chef at lower Heights-area Patrenalla’s, and a native of Sardinia, opens his own restaurant with business partner, Luigi Campioni, on Westheimer and Dairy Ashford. Called Andrea’s is serves approachable Italian and Italian-American dishes that are a very good value. Unfortunately, Pintus dies as the result of an accident in early 2011 at the age of 55.
 
2009 – Marco Wiles opens his third truly Italian restaurant along a short stretch of Westheimer, Poscol, in March. It takes its name from the term in dialect used for a main thoroughfare (Via Poscolle) in the northeastern Italian city of Udine, the hometown of Wiles’ family. Featuring small plates and inspiration largely from Veneto and Friuli, it sports another well-chosen all-Italian wine list.
 
2009 – Lynette Hawkins, who ran the beloved La Mora, gets back into the game in September with her Tuscan- and  Venetian-inspired small plate spot Giacomo’s on Westheimer west of Kirby. From the start, it features a very well-chosen and well-priced all-Italian wine list that seems to cover every corner of that country. It evolves to become one of the city's most reliable and best-value dining destinations, regardless of cuisine.
 
2009 – Legendary restaurateur Piero Selvaggio – whose Santa Monica eatery Valentino was long regarded as the best Italian restaurant in the country – opens his third branch in Houston’s modern Hotel Derek near the Galleria. The restaurant is a new concept for Houston, an Italian ambition and credibility previously found elsewhere in this country just in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, and one spot in Philadelphia. A veteran of Valentino’s Las Vegas operation, the talented Cunninghame West heads the kitchen here, doing an excellent job with an approachable version of Selvaggio’s inspired takes on pan-Italian alta cucina. James Beard Award-winning chef Luciano Pellegrini occasionally comes to town from Sin City to aid with special dinners for some added culinary power. Texas Monthly names it and Poscol on its list of best restaurants to open in the state that year.
 
2009 – Stella Sola by one of the city’s top toques, Bryan Caswell, along with partner Bill Floyd opens in the Heights in November 2009. Influenced by the meaty robustness of some northern Italian cooking, its name translates to “Lone Star” – or “Lonely Star” – in English. One of Caswell’s early cooking stints was at Damian’s. He later cooked with the talented Rocco DiSpirito well before DiSpirito’s televised Italian-American restaurant nightmare, The Restaurant in 2003.
 
2010 – In January, Sardinian Nico Chessa, the former chef at Arcodoro, is named executive chef of Valentino’s flagship Santa Monica location after heading one of its Las Vegas restaurants for several years. This provides some additional confirmation about the quality of the kitchen at Arcodoro over the years.
 
2010 – In April, Tuscan Renato De Pirro, an alumnus of Pierro Selvaggio’s Las Vegas restaurants and previously the executive chef at Osteria del Circo, the Maccioni’s family refined and highly regarded trattoria in the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, takes over the kitchen at Ristorante Cavour, bringing a more properly Italian taste to the menu at this upscale establishment.
 
2010 – Ciao Bello is another Vallone enterprise that had opened a year earlier in a space once occupied by La Strada on San Felipe. It is named among “11 More Restaurants You Don't Want to Miss” by Esquire in the fall, with its osso buco ravioli cited as a dish to order. It will become known for its zesty flavors among Roman-style thin-crust pizzas, pastas, Gulf-oriented seafood and meaty Italian-American-inflected preparations in an attractively casual and comfortable but very stylish setting that has long been a Vallone signature. Also in 2010, Vallone’s Caffe Bello takes over the original address of La Strada in Montrose, but struggles for traction in an evolving neighborhood.
 
2010 – Maurizio Ferrarese moves from a Michelin-starred Four Seasons restaurant in Florence to head the kitchen at Quattro, which had become less interesting after Tim Keating’s departure in 2005. The restaurant will reach new heights under Ferrarese.
 
2010 – In December Tony Vallone’s Amici in Sugar Land closes. It seems competition from a recently opened Olive Garden nearby might have played a factor. This does not reflect well on Fort Bend residents.

2011 – Pizaro's opens in a strip center on Memorial in west Houston serving Neapolitan style pizza, the most truly Neapolitan that Houston has thus seen. Proprietor Bill Hutchinson puts his “Verace Pizza Napoletana” certification as a pizzaiolo to good use, and the bare-bones spots draws customers from around the area including a number of Italian ex-pats.
 
2011 – In an area deficient in quality fresh Italian sausage, you can purchase it at the two Carrabba's owned by the family, though you will likely have to call ahead. The piquant, flavorful sausage is made by Johnny Carrabba, Sr. Unusual for Italian sausage elsewhere, but consistent with Texas, it contains a fair portion of beef.
 
2012 – Valentino, likely the best Italian restaurant that ever was in Houston, cannot overcome the very difficult location in the Hotel Derek that is a curse on restaurants and shutters. A shame, as proprietor Piero Selvaggio never got to do all he wanted to with the restaurant including becoming more adventurous with the offerings and expanding its wine list to at least a substantial of his Santa Monica original that has one of top handful of wine lists in the country.

2013 – John Sheely, who won considerable acclaim at Riviera Grill then Mockingbird Bistro, opens Osteria Mazzantini in the Galleria area referencing his grandmother's Ligurian heritage. Though well-reviewed, with its high rent and expensive buildout that featured a rather dark interior, which could seem a little gloomy to some patrons, it only lasted until 2015, unfortunately. Its signature dish was ravioli stuffed with kale, ricotta, and minced calf’s sweetbreads, served in a sauce of browned butter, pine nuts, some balsamic vinegar and a touch of lemon.  Featuring well-made pasta and excellent ingredients, with the sweetbreads and plentiful butter, it was a rich, savory dish. It was inspired by the ravioli that his grandmother served him when he was young. Instead of sweetbreads, those ravioli were filled with calf’s brains – a delicacy commonly found in Italian restaurants over a century ago – but he thought the brains might be a little too unusual for most local diners.
 
2013 – Clark Cooper Concepts open Coppa serving a take on contemporary Americanized Italian food in a lively setting that will prove well-suited for the increasingly upscale Rice Village area. The food is pricey for what it is, but its wines are very good values, and from a nicely edited list, similar to the group’s other restaurants.

2014 – Inspired by the Italian heritage of executive chef Ryan Pera, Coltivare opens in January on White Oak in the Heights offering seasonal American-Italian fare including distinctively bready pizzas along with pastas and larger preparations in a casual, no reservations setting that seduces most local food critics.
 
2014 – Giancarlo Ferrara, the executive chef at Arcodoro for over a decade, opens Amalfi on Westheimer west of the Galleria in the same strip center as The Palm. Highlighting the dishes and flavors of his native Salerno, down the coast from Naples, that should be familiar to most American diners along with some items and techniques from his stops in the Veneto and at a French restaurant bearing two Michelin stars, the restaurant quickly becomes one of the top Italians in the city.
 
2014 – Former Houstonian Damian Mandola, 61, is arrested twice in two days in April, first for burglary then assault with a deadly weapon and criminal mischief around a long-running dispute with Duchman Family Winery in Driftwood in central Texas. Adjacent to his Italian-American restaurant, Trattoria Lisina, it was founded as Mandola Estate Winery and Mandola was a co-owner until 2010. In 2019, he will be sentenced to two years of deferred adjudication as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to dismiss a related felony count and he pays a fine of just over $12,000.
 
2015 – Now sporting the descriptive phrase, “Naples Influenced. Milan Inspired. Houston Cherished,” Tony’s celebrates its fiftieth year in business.
 
2015 – About The United States of Pizza cookbook by chef Craig Priebe and Dianne Jacob published this year, Cree LeFavour in The New York Times Book Review writes that “My favorite was the shamelessly good Baked Egg and Eggplant Pizza from Dolce Vita in Houston.”

2016 – Lira Rossa, a dairy in Moulton, about two hours due west of Houston, is founded, producing excellent Italian-style cow's milk cheeses in the style of those from Friuli where principal Andrea Cudin is from and elsewhere like mozzarella. Sold at the big Urban Farmers Market on Saturdays, the cheeses find a home at many of the city's best restaurants.

2017 – Across the street from the ballpark, Astros owner opens Potente, an upscale, expensive and exuberantly flavored American-Italian restaurant that eventually gets the skilled Danny Trace as executive chef. He had just been in that role at local Brennan’s, and worked before that at the estimable Commander's Palace in New Orleans. The 'Stros also win their first World Series title in the fall, coincidentally. Some sheen will come off that victory in a couple of years.
 
2017 – Chef Mark Cox of Tony’s then Mark's fame begins consulting at Fratelli's, an Italian-American restaurant in Spring Branch that began as a franchised offshoot of the original Fratelli's on 290. His work improves the food and the restaurant's profile, which becomes a favorite of an older set of west Houston customers.

2017 – After 36 years in business, Carmelo’s closes after Christmas brunch. Owner Carmelo Mauro, a steadfast member of the Houston restaurant community was both the former president of both the Texas Restaurant Association and the Greater Houston Restaurant Association.
 
2018 – Arcodoro, the upscale Sardinian restaurant in the Galleria that drew loyal patronage from ex-pat Italians and other Europeans closes in February after nearly two decades in business.
 
2018 – In a strip center among other small restaurants along lowest Westheimer, La Sicilia opens in March from a pastry chef originally from Sciacca on Sicily’s southwestern coast. It serves beautiful pastries from that island of incredible sweets including cannoli, of course, and also afternoon savories like sandwiches on cornetti and pizza-like focaccias.
 
2018 – In April, after a very brief visit here, the Italian wine and food publication Gambero Rosso names Amalfi as the best fine dining Italian restaurant in Houston, Sud Italia, with Maurizio Ferrarese in the kitchen, as tops for traditional cuisine, the Dallas-based chain Cane Rosso for pizza – quite surprisingly, and maybe a bit grudgingly according to the person I spoke with from Gambero Rosso – and Poscol for having the best wine program among local Italian restaurants.
 
2018 – In July, the greatest Texans’ player ever, J.J. Watt, asked his five million-plus followers on Twitter for the best Italian restaurant in Houston. The clear favorite of the 2,000 or so respondents was, very oddly and depressingly, Olive Garden, of which there are over twenty locations in the Houston area, which is also depressing to learn.
 
2018 – Tanglewood’s neighborhood Italian restaurant from Tony Vallone, Ciao Bello, closes rather suddenly in August, a couple of weeks after sibling steakhouse Vallone’s does so in Spring Branch.
 
2018 – In November, chef Maurizio Ferrarese, a native of Vercelli, the rice-growing capital in Piedmont, veteran of kitchens throughout Italy, and who won deserved plaudits at Quattro and Sud Italia, is hired to take over the kitchen at Ristorante Cavour.

2019 – Rosie Cannonball, the second of five planned concepts, four serving food, to open in a very smart and neat complex in the heart of Westheimer’s restaurant row directly across the street from the estimable UB Preserv, it is essentially an Italian restaurant with a more than a few nods to the Iberian peninsula on the initially short menu, which includes probably the smallest plates of pasta ever seen locally outside of a child’s menu. The crowd-pleasing dishes done well and stylish space made it an attractive stop for the ladies who lunch and a busy spot at night. In November 2022, it is the seen of a reportedly raucous early morning party celebrating the Astros victory in the World Series after the clinching Game 6 for Justin Verlander and his wife Kate Upton, who are regular diners and friends of the owners.
 
2019 – Houston has historically been tough on out-of-town restaurateurs and hotel dining. But west coast-based television chef Chris Cosentino channels his Italian-American roots into Rosalie that will prove some staying power in the C. Baldwin, a surprisingly hip hotel at the southwestern edge of downtown. Chef-created Italian-American might be the best description of the offerings here that will become more contemporary Italian and hotel guest-oriented.
 
2019 – One of the articles in an entire issue of Bon Appétit dedicated to Italian-American food is “My Singular Obsession with Carrabba’s Chicken Bryan.” The dish of boneless, skinless chicken breast topped with a patty of goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and a lemon-butter-wine sauce has been phenomenally popular at the 200-plus chain Carrabba’s in recent years. Created in 1989 or so, according to Johnny Carrabba on Chris Shepherd’s Eat Like a Local show in 2025, the dish was developed by his partner and uncle, Damian Mandola, as a riff on something he was serving at Damian’s.
 
2019 – In December, Gabriele Stabile opens the white tablecloth Palinuro on Cinco Ranch Boulevard in Katy. Oddly for the location, the restaurant serves truly Italian cooking, if with necessary American nods, and does it well in mostly familiar dishes. Justifiably popular, it moves to a larger space down the strip center in a few years. The restaurant is named after Stabile’s hometown on the southern coast of Campania in southern Italy. Long a sleepy fishing village, the town became an early outpost of Club Med that operated from the 1960s to the 1980s.

2020 – At the start of the year, just in time for a worldwide calamity, Impero opens in the strip center on Memorial and Kirkwood where Pizaro’s started. Sporting a full menu of Italian-American favorites and a tacky decor cluttered with Italian artifacts, mostly from calcio, it does a commendable job with thin, minimally topped, Neapolitan-inspired pizzas featuring soft but sturdy crusts, including maybe more options with anchovies than any where else locally. You can even hear Italian spoken when dining here. 

2020 - Longtime local restaurateur Bill Floyd opens the casual, comfortable Porta’Vino on Washington just north of I-10 in March, not many days before the pandemic really hits. The contemporary, mostly Italian-American fare is from a menu overseen by Danny Trace at Potente, though the restaurant is certainly "not aiming to be Da Marco," according to Floyd. Its biggest draw, helping keep the restaurant seemingly always packed, is likely the ridiculously low markup on its wines and only a $12 corkage fee on bottles brought in. In that, it took La Vista, which operated on Fountain View for a couple of decades, as inspiration. The former chef and owner of La Vista, Greg Gordon, is its opening chef, in fact. A second location will open in The Woodlands a couple of years later. Floyd had partnered with star chef Bryan Caswell for some years, most notably at the acclaimed Reef, but Porta'Vino's website today only allows the he has "worked with renowned chefs Robert Del Grande, Michael Cordua, Jean Georges Vongrichten, and Danny Trace."

2020 – Patrenella's near Waugh north of Memorial, closes after nearly three decades in business. Set partially in the house where owner Sammy Patrenella grew up, this was a favorite of many, including those who get there quickly from downtown for lunch, for its approachable, comforting Italian-American dishes, even after the departure of chef Andrea Pintus when it had reached its height.

2020 – Vincent Mandola of Nino’s, Vincent’s, and Pronto, and the Mandola clan of local restaurateurs, passes away at age 77. His restaurants remain open and family-run for the next couple of years.
 
2020 – Tony Vallone dies in September at the age of 75. The city’s most famous restaurateur and proprietor of Tony’s, along with Anthony’s, Caffé Bello, Ciao Bello, Grotto, La Griglia, Vallone’s, and Los Tonyos over the years. Vallone’s restaurants, especially Tony’s, garnered national acclaim and continued attention across the decades, and greatly raised the quality of dining in Houston and Italian-themed fare, in particular. His restaurants exhibited a well-known cosseting of customers and terrific sense of design style in addition to its culinary highlights. Tony’s, opened since 1965 in three locations, carries on with his widow Donna Vallone. Tony’s will eventually become less Italian and significantly less appealing.
 
2020 – In the fall, Marco Wiles finally closed his acclaimed pizzeria Dolce Vita on lower Westheimer. Not due to the pandemic, Wiles announced he wanted to focus on his other two restaurants down the street, Poscol and Da Marco as he passed his sixtieth birthday.
 
2020 – Chef Travis McShane returns home to Houston after about a decade working for famed New York chef and restaurateur – and an originator of California cuisine in the early 1980s – Jonathan Waxman that included stints at the Italian-esque Barbuto and then as the corporate chef, with Ostia in a long-empty space on Dunlavy in Montrose, opening finally in October. Featuring recognizably Mediterranean ingredients and preparations, most of the menu is Italian-inspired with bold notes, including very well-done pizzas from a wood-burning oven, seemingly well-suited for the city from a very experienced hand.
 
2020 – The folks behind the terrific contemporary bistro Nancy’s Hustle open Tiny Champions after Thanksgiving, also in EaDo and also with an odd name. Focusing on Italian-inspired but distinctive pizzas and house-made fresh pastas, the team of Sean Jensen and baking-loving chef Jason Vaughan have introduced a much-needed top-notch new pizzeria to a pizza-deficient city.

2021 – With an emphasis on the cooking of the beautiful region of the Marche, from where the owners and chefs hail, Concura in Highland Village joins the handful of truly Italian restaurants in Houston. Small inside with a décor that blends contemporary and rustic notes in plenty of black and dark gray and a distinct Eurotrash feel, but with an attractive open kitchen that feels like a newer restaurant in Italy, as does its outdoor seating along a sidewalk. It is owned by the husband and wife duo of Alessio Ricci and Jessica Biondi. After the couple decides to return to Italy, the restaurant repurposes to Dante’s in 2023. There is new ownership and a new chef, becoming somewhat less Italian and much less interesting but with a brighter, more inviting setting. This address will be home to future Italian restaurants; a seemingly cursed location.

2021 – The MFAH gets a couple of worthwhile new spots, the modern French Le Jardinier and the cafeteria-like, casual Italian Cafe Leonelli from the acclaimed New York chef Jonathan Benno, who has a similar operation there. Both are from the restaurant group bent on preserving and upholding the legacy legendary late French chef Joël Robuchon and later collecting Michelin stars. Located in the new Kinder building, both can be worth a destination by themselves, especially Le Jardinier, quickly one of the best restaurants in the city.

2021 – In September, Fresco in a strip center on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby and its chef Roberto Crescini are featured on an episode of Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives where Crescini makes fresh pasta, guanciale, and spaghetti alla carbona and tagliatelle with lamb. He is originally from near Lake Garda and worked in kitchens in Rome for years. This is another good choice from Fieri for Houston, where he has rarely made a misstep here in selections for his show. Fresco, however, closes early the next year.

2021 – Alba, the new concept at the Hotel Granduca replacing Ristorante Cavour features an updated rich, plush, green-hued setting, but thankfully has the old chef, Maurizio Ferrarese, who might be the top Italian toque in Texas and some ways beyond. Terrific with fresh pastas and gnocchi, there is certainly no area chef that does a better job with risotto that’s on the menu a couple of times, befitting one from Vercelli that's not terribly far from the town of Alba.
 
2021 – From the folks at Armando’s on the other side of the shopping center at the edge of River Oaks, the attractive and fairly precious Lulu’s opens in mid-2021, a reprise of their Round Top spot. It serves creditable versions of contemporary takes on Italian-American fare spiked with popular dishes from Italy. Misspellings on the menu – guanchale, al’amatriciana, caccio, putanesca – help let you know that this is not serving anything like authentic Italian fare. But the approachable preparations are well-oriented to its target market, as are the portions, not so robust, befitting an older clientele.

2021 – Before the close of the year, husband and wife, Christina and Alfredo Mojica, veterans of Da Marco, open up Amore in the sliver of a space on Shepherd Drive that housed Maine-ly Sandwiches. Even with the never-ending roadway construction in front, the restaurant quickly draws patrons of nearby Da Marco for cooking that is very familiar. Well-done pizzas from a golden-tiled oven might be the highlight and complement the usually hearty Italian preparations that ignore the seasons, except for those of the white truffles.

2021 – In December, Tosca Italian Gourmet opens in The Woodlands. Owner Maya Sretenovic Schiavo, who had moved from Italy a couple of years before, wanted to create some of the tastes of home. With the aid of some Italian staff, the daytime café serves sandwiches on focaccias, which bear the names of central and northern Italian cities and regions, flatbreads, cakes, and Italian pastries. A second location opens in Cypress in 2024.

2022 – A small outlet of the acclaimed Brooklyn pizza joint, Roberta's, opens in the food court that is the dining section of the Post Market in the northwest corner of downtown, finally in the spring. Joining several other cities in this now mini-chain, the Neapolitan-influenced, minimalist thin-crust pies live up to the considerable hype and are what quality pizzeria-lacking Houston needs. Unfortunately, it closes suddenly in July 2023.

2022 - Chef Roberto Crescini is nicely not away very long as he essentially reprises Fresco in a better location and a much nicer setting – and no incessant din from a nearby freeway – as Davanti, just south of Central Market on Weslayan, if now costing a few more lire. Still counter-service, the menu is about the same as are the pastas made also with hard durum wheat for a more toothsome texture and the ability to be extruded. It also continues the American consumer-friendly mix and match of pasta shapes and sauces, and its tasty take on the Roman pizza al taglio. House-made sausages and occasional salumi reflect his training, too, as a norcino.

2022 – At the end of July, the family of Vincent Mandola close the rest of the restaurants in the compound on W. Dallas street where service began forty-five years earlier following the family's sale of the two-and-a-half acres of property where the restaurants sat. Nino's, Vincent's, Grappino di Nino and the little kiosk for gelato shutter. All of the casual, counter-service Pronto locations had closed earlier. Long-popular bastions for familiar Italian-American fare studded with Italy-inspired items like osso buco and fettuccine Alfredo along the way plus the not-so-Italian rotisserie chicken at Vincent's.
 
2022 – A couple Italian restaurants created with considerable expensive open in the Galleria area and on West Gray near River Oaks, Il Bracco and Zanti, from out of town restaurant concerns. From the Dallas area and Mexico, respectively, these are pricy, pretty, and dull, and don’t enthrall too many discerning diners. Both are part of a trend of non-chef-driven multi-unit Italian concepts – margins are good on cacio e pepe, after all. Il Bracco is what you would expect from an Italian-themed restaurant birthed in the Park Cities of Dallas. These are joined in the same vein with Dallas-bred Lombardi in Uptown Park at the end of the next year.
 
2023 – VinSanto, a smart wine bar and bottle shop with a strong Italian accent and sensibility, opens in west Houston on Memorial west of Gessner in January from Riccardo Guerrieri and Giorgio Caflisch, two local wine pros from Italy. Guerrieri, from Umbria, ran the similar Vinology on Bissonnet and Caflisch, born in Friuli, teaches Italian wine at the Texas Wine School. The casual menu, necessarily well-suited for the wines, includes oval-shaped pinsas, a Roman-style flatbread.
 
2023 – Two veterans of Da Marco, Mike Sammons and chef Fernando Rios, open Mimo in the space that was the last address of the beloved Thai restaurant Kanomwan in the East End. Sammons was one of the founders of the city’s best wine bar, 13 Celsius, about fifteen years earlier. Some local critics praise Mimo, which serves a version of the pan-Italian cooking found at Da Marco in more humble digs.
 
2023 – In May in the upscale River Oaks District center, Bari opens with the experienced Renato De Pirro heading the kitchen. The beautiful, brass-hued interior features tall ceilings and a long space for 150 that is large but surprisingly intimate plus seating for an additional hundred on the patio. Quickly popular with a noticeably expensively-attired and -coiffed crowd, the serious kitchen highlights popular, attractively plated pan-Italian trattoria fare, along with pizza, made very well and mostly with excellent foodstuffs imported from Italy. This is the best Italian restaurant to open in Houston since Alba, and quickly one of the city's top Italians.
 
2023 – The Landry’s La Griglia moves from its bawdy and riotously decorated Tony Vallone-created space of three decades on West Gray, which garnered national attention during the Vallone years. The new location on W. Dallas is in the space that was the longtime home of the popular Nino’s. Attractive enough with white tablecloths throughout, and a pleasant patio with a separate small bar, there are pandering photographs of Italian movie icons and scenes on the walls, the new La Griglia exudes the feeling of a chain restaurant, not surprisingly. It is part of small restaurant complex occupying Vincent Mandola’s old one, and sitting steps from star chef Manabu Horiuchi’s Katami. His place, one of the city’s best, rather noticeably far outshines La Griglia.
 
2023 – Elro, a slightly odd but terrific “pizzeria and crudo bar,” from Terrance Gallivan, who was one of the principals at the acclaimed Pass & Provisions, opens in June. In a big city with a deficit of quality pizzerias, the admirable individually sized pizzas are a start and a draw for many. Before arriving in Houston a decade earlier, Gallivan worked kitchens at acclaimed Italian restaurants in Manhattan that had three stars (out of four) from The New York Times, Fiamma and Alto, the last where he was executive chef. There’s noticeable Italian subtext throughout, Italian done well. The succinct, nicely chosen wine list is nearly entirely Italian, too. Unfortunately, it closes at the end of 2024.
 
2023 – Coastline Pizzeria opens in the second half of the year in the First Ward. It is small, comfortable spot that is both passionately run pizzeria and comfortable bar. The pizzas come in two styles, Neapolitan-inspired, and a unique version style that are grilled and than finished on a pizza stone. The latter, features a nice, thin and crunchy crust that is just a little different and works well with a enjoyable array of toppings. The Neapolitan versions might not have quite the crown and are not soupy in the middle like those found in Naples, but are among the best in town and a worthy of a drive.
 
2023 – The Bastion Group of local Le Jardinier partners with Berg Hospitality to open Tavola in a glitzy space on Post Oak Boulevard. They bring the seasoned Luca di Benedetto, the former head corporate chef of the 20-restaurant Giorgio Armani Group, from Milan to lead the kitchen. And the result is truly Italian and initially well-executed, comforting and upscale pan-Italian trattoria-like fare. The menu is approachable and easily discernible with items Caesar salad, fritto misto, spaghetti with clams, house-made pappardelle with Texas wild boar, tagliatelle with black truffle, chicken cacciatore, and tagliata with Prime New York strip. Execution will not be consistent going forward, unfortunately. Staff will turnover, remaining Italian in key places, and recover its footing in the future.
 
2024 – Los Angeles-bred, celebrity-backed, Pizzana opens early in the year on West Gray at Shepherd. This is the real deal for Neapolitan-inspired pizzas, immediately becoming one of the best pizzerias in town. You can’t have a good pizza without a good crust and these “neo-Neapolitan” creations sit on a sturdy, crispy, airy and very tasty platforms created with a dough kneaded by hand and fermented for a couple of days. Rather than the traditional soft Neapolitan pizza dough, it is actually modeled on the bread dough from the bakery of chef Daniele Uditi’s aunt in Caserta near Naples. It works extremely well. Available in a variety of combinations with a number of high quality toppings used judiciously.
 
2024 – After plying the local farmers markets in recent years, Francesco Casetta, a native of Florence and a former executive chef at Tony’s, opens a small fresh pasta shop, Casetta Cucina, on Campbell just north of I-10 in Spring Branch this summer. Along with pastas in the refrigerated case made from the big bags of Caputo flour seen about, it sells rather unique, Italian sandwiches made with the unfamiliarly worded schiacciata, pronounced skiah-CHA-tah. This is a fairly dense focaccia-like bread from Tuscany that gives the assemblages featuring usually prosciutto, mortadella, or mozzarella a sturdy, delicious base. The unusual name with its assault of consonants might give pause when customers go into the shop for pasta and see the little placard on the counter for sandwiches. But these are some of the very best Italian sandwiches in the area, and worthy of a visit alone.
 
2024 – Magdalena’s from Nicolas Nikic, who worked for years at Dolce Vita, opens early in the year on Buffalo Speedway near West U. Maybe less consistent than its inspiration, and with a menu looking startlingly like it, the similar, thin-crust Italian-style pizzas have a strong pedigree and can be excellent as with its margherita, the simple classic that’s enlivened with rich, buffalo milk mozzarella. Nicely, the well-edited selection of wines with welcome prices. 
 
2024 – In the space in the midst of the Rice Village that Eau Tour recently occupied, Milton’s opens. Italian-American is an easier sell than French here. Described as an “American trattoria,” a phrase that doesn’t make a lot of sense, this serves chef-y touches to Italian-American fare with some contemporary Italian-from-Italy items in an approachable neighborhood setting fitting for the pricey zip codes nearby. If jazzed up, there are the expected-today octopus, arancini, burrata, branzino and n’duja but also sweetbreads, honest-to-goodness veal Parmesan, and shrimp de Jonghe, Chicago’s gift to seafood cookery. For nearly ten different hearty preparations, the pastas are made in house guided by Seth Siegel-Gardner, the culinary director at the parent Local Foods Group of Benjy Levitt and formerly one half of the Pass & Provisions chef duo.
 
2025 – Da Marco celebrates a quarter century in business in March.
 
2025 – Following the sale of Hotel Granduca in Uptown Park by the Borlenghi family, Alba closes and is replaced by the lower-key Remi, but Maurizio Ferrarese still heads its kitchen. Probably the most underappreciated chef in the area and one of the very best Italian chefs in the entire region, the hotel guest-friendly menu includes many Italian delights. Among other skills, Ferrarese is certainly the local best crafter of risotto dishes around and there are a couple of decadent ones one the menu.
 
2025 – Ostia closes in September.
 
2025 – In the space on Westheimer near Highland Village that saw Concura and a couple Dante’s – and seemingly a brief ownership connection with a Barolo and Gavi producer – Cotto e Crudo opens, retaining a strong Italian identity. More casual than its predecessors, it specializes in the unique panuozzo and the increasingly seen Roman pinsa. The panuozzo is a sandwich built on a crispy and soft baked pizza dough that was first crafted south of Naples in the early 1980s and has slowly been found elsewhere.

2025 - The second Carrabba's location, Carrabba's, The Original on Voss and Woodway, which still operated by the family, renovates to the tune of a reported $1.5 million. The original one on Kirby had expanded and remodled a few years earlier, in 2021.
 
2025 – In November, Bari announces a second location to open in 2026 in The Woodlands.
 
2025 – Terrance Gallivan, most recently of Elro, is back heading a kitchen within a year, and again working in Italian translated into the current American idiom. The 40-seat dining room at Hypsi in a new hotel on 20th Street in the Heights is quickly bustling just about every night. This late-year entry fits well among cluster of top spots on 19th and 20th Streets; Squable and Baso are nearby. As at Elro, the wines are nicely chosen, with a preference for Piedmont and northern Italy, and priced to strongly encourage a bottle order.
 
2025 – The long-popular Italian-American sandwich, salad and pasta place, Paulie’s on Westheimer, and its adjacent wine bar, the terrific Camarata, shutter after losing their lease.
 
2026 – Roberto Crescini adds pinsa to the menu at Davanti as the year dawns. He offers it with a couple of unusual toppings, veal tonnato and another with preserved herring with fresh cheese and bergamot zest. This Roman-born flatbread has become increasingly popular throughout the country and Crescini offers a more artisanal take on this than is typically found, aided from his tenure in Rome. It joins on the menu his more traditionally pizza, the crispy pizza a ruota di carro – cartwheel size pizza in Italian – which was introduced a couple of years earlier.
 
2026 – The aptly named Osteria di Mercato opens in April. It is an adjacent and separate part of Mercato and Company, a cute, quaint café and shop, across from the Southside Place municipal buildings and in the midst of West U that serves coffee, Italian goods and wine, and quaintly-sized Italian-themed sandwiches and pastas that opened the previous year. The smart new, 30-seat full-service restaurant offers a limited, approachable menu of Italian dishes with some twists that include braised rabbit as a pasta sauce, a white bolognese covering another pasta, and quail stuffed with Swiss chard.
 

I’ve got to add that through a coincidence of fate, I was born in the Italian North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, baptized in the same church as Joe DiMaggio, and afterwards belonged to the same parish in Fort Lee, New Jersey as the mother of Frank Sinatra, whom I was told reliably purchased kegs for church functions. A very long-time Houstonian, I am the author of three editions of Houston Dining on the Cheap and was the last local editor for the Zagat Survey, a fun part-time gig until its then-owner Google shuttered the publication. Possibly more pertinently, I am also the author of the forthcoming Eating Italian in America: The History of Dining Out for the Country’s Favorite Food.

Pasta with shaved white truffles at Bari in the River Oaks District