Dining Review: Ronnie Grisanti's fresh take on Tuscan

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The pan-seared sea bass at Ronnie Grisanti is served over risotto, with shiitake mushrooms, Roma tomatoes and artichoke hearts. It's finished with a white wine thyme sauce.

Photo by Chris Desmond

Barbara Prest and Hal Brunt enjoy appetizers with friends at Ronnie Grisanti on Poplar in Memphis.

Photo by Chris Desmond

The Rinaldo: chopped iceberg lettuce tossed in Miss Mary dressing with bacon, gorgonzola, olives and pepperocini.

Photo by Chris Desmond

The chocolate cheesecake -- a dessert with a 30-year history on Ronnie Grisanti's menus.

Ronnie Grisanti, in his perennial white chef's jacket and practical tennis shoes, is once again working the dining room of a restaurant that bears his name.

Son of Elfo, nephew of Big John, both owners of Grisanti restaurants past, Ronnie declared his independence as an interpreter of the family recipes when he opened an amiable little café in the 1980s, in what was then a commercial no man's land at Union and Marshall. (The place was best known before and after Ronnie Grisanti's time there as Sun Studios.) From there, he was lured to a site on Beale Street, but he soon moved on to a small shopping center at the corner of Poplar and Fenwick, where he started a restaurant more than 20 years ago with his sons, Alex and Judd.

Those were the easy days for him, when the kids were in their 20s, he recalled last week. In the past five years, there have been diversions: Older son Judd broke off to open a restaurant Downtown; then Alex and his father worked together on a restaurant in Germantown. Judd returned to the site at Poplar and Fenwick, and a year later, Ronnie returned as well.

Now Judd is gone again, and Ronnie, 71, is carrying on. After poring over family recipes that were 50 and 60 years old to recharge the menu, he says, he's planning a cookbook as well.

Whatever drama has played out in the Grisanti clan, Ronnie's "traditional cucina Tuscana" has paid steadfast homage to the customary ingredients and cooking of central Italy (though the massive portions are certainly southern U.S. style.) If you exclude olive oil, salt and pepper, you often are able to count off the ingredients of a Tuscan dish on one hand. Tomatoes, fennel-spiced sausage, mushrooms, onions -- there's not much to dislike on the list of basics.

On our first visit to the reincarnated Ronnie Grisanti restaurant, we asked for the scampi al forno ($12) to start. They arrived stacked on top of a simple brown sauce with pepper flakes, useful for moistening the baked shellfish and extraordinarily pleasing. But the bread that came after we requested it was in the form of dense rolls that didn't mop up the liquid as well as a crusty loaf would have done.

This restaurant doesn't stray far from the vault of Grisanti family classics, and the "Original Miss Mary's Salad" ($6) is one of the sturdy survivors, with its finely tuned dressing of oil, vinegar, lemon and garlic. A Caesar salad had a definite anchovy edge -- you like that or you don't. The best of the salads we tried was the Rinaldo ($8), iceberg lettuce with Miss Mary's uncomplicated dressing and bacon, gorgonzola and olives.

We indulged in the "Specialita de la Casa" ($22), an Elfo Special paired with baked manicotti. The Elfo is an easy thing to love, the pasta finished in the pan as it should be with butter, shrimp, mushrooms, garlic. And did I say butter? The firm manicotti shells were densely packed with a filling of spicy ground meat and spinach, baked in a gently spiced and standard-setting meat-and-tomato gravy.

The sea bass ($30) at the top of the Grisanti fish menu came on a creamy risotto topped with a jumble of shiitakes, tomatoes and artichokes that threatened to overwhelm the mild fish.

Dining at Ronnie Grisanti on a midweek night was a fairly subdued experience, but on a recent Saturday night, the place was bubbling. The Grizzlies had just won a playoff game, and diners wearing white "Believe" T-shirts dotted the room. It was the night before Mother's Day, and a couple of large tables included at least three generations of diners. And just as all the cheerful noise started to subside, refugees from a Carnival Memphis event drifted in wearing party clothes. The food we had that night was stellar.

Ravioli, always preceded on Ronnie's menus by the word "handmade," was gilded with that lava-thick Grisanti's gravy. At the door, Ronnie was promoting the homemade spaghetti -- we had it in the cream sauce that came with the veal piccata, which is served with artichoke hearts and capers that add a pleasant pungence to the lemon in this dish.

I was hovering over the pasta list, and tentatively tossed out a choice, which drew a swift "No" from our server. When I switched to the rigatoni and Italian sausage, he approved enthusiastically. (I am all in favor of letting an informed server be my guide.) The rigatoni arrived in a vivid red Pomodoro sauce of freshly chopped tomatoes studded with green and red peppers.

The key lime pie we ordered was actually a lovely key lime cheesecake, and we added a chocolate cheesecake when it was described as the dessert that began collecting fans during the old days on Union and Marshall. It is luscious -- firm and dense on the plate, light and fluffy on the fork.

Two wines we tried went well with the spectrum of traditional fare at the restaurant. The Yume Montepulciano was smooth and velvety, and the Kali Hart Pinot Noir was bright, clear and suggestive of berries.

Ronnie Grisanti

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Service:

Atmosphere:

Address: 2855 Poplar.

Telephone: (901) 552-3050.

Hours: Open 5 p.m. Monday- Saturday.

Reviewer's choices: Handmade toasted ravioli ($10); Rinaldo salad ($8); Rigatoni and Italian sausage ($22); Veal piccata ($25); chocolate cheesecake.

Alcohol: Full bar

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