photograph by clay tomas
”Big John” and Delores Grisanti at their East Memphis home.
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in our October 1985 issue. Considering how many times Grisanti’s restaurant was mentioned in our very first Readers’ Restaurant Poll (published in 1983)) — we thought readers would enjoy reading about “Big John” and the Grisanti family who made it all possible.
He’s the Memphis version of Sir John Falstaff, and his restaurant is the Boar’s Head Tavern. His corner on the jocularity market has made “Big John” Grisanti as popular a character here as Prince Hal’s corpulent companion was in fifteenth-century England. Grisanti is so jolly, in fact, that he posed for a drawing of Santa Claus for this magazine’s December 1979 issue. Can all this good will be real, or does the public merryman turn into a private grump when he closes his East Memphis doors?
“What you see is what you get,” says Grisanti. “At home or in public, I’m the same guy. I don’t think my personality has changed since the day I was born; I was always flamboyant and jovial — I don’t want to say full of bull, but I was that, too.”
His wife of 31 years, the former Dolores Debandi, nods her agreement. They speak with the comfort of a longtime married couple, finishing thoughts for each other, correcting this, adding that, in synch and obviously (corny, maybe, but true) in love.
“John is so well-known,” Dolores jokes, “that most people don’t even know I exist.” But exist she does, and while John rules the roost at Grisanti’s at 1481 Airways, Dolores seems to call the shots at Chez Grizanti. She has dominion over the household furnishings (with the exception of John’s Stratolounger chair), she landscaped the yard and the area around their new pool (“I shed tears over that pool,” she says, in mock despair over how long the construction took), and, surprisingly, she won’t let John near her kitchen.
“If I cook at home,” he says, “it’s going to be outside, on the grill. There’s no way she’d let me cook in that little kitchen.” One of the city’s best-known and most celebrated chefs not allowed to cook at home? “He’s just sloppy, messy,” says Dolores. “When he’s in the kitchen at the restaurant, he’s got the help cleaning up.” The Grisanti kitchen is pristine — not a spatula out of place. “She will allow me to fix my breakfast — a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk,” says John with a characteristic twinkle. (He twinkles a lot.)
Grisanti began his love affair with wine while he was working in his father’s restaurant, Willie’s Grill, down on Main Street in the mid-Fifties. There was a liquor store in front, and Grisanti says, “I thought it would be a good idea to sell some wines from the liquor store to the restaurant customers.”
Who is this John Grisanti? Born October 25, 1928, and educated at Christian Brothers High School (“I’m not a college graduate”), he dabbles in collecting things — stamps, coins, guns, Boehm porcelains, rare Scotch whiskies, large silver wine chalices. Here is a man who admires Vince Lombardi, President Ronald Reagan, Lee Iacocca, and Fred Smith, and who considers his 31 years of marriage his biggest accomplishment. (“I always said, if I ever find the right girl, I’m going to have a successful marriage.”)
He’s a man whose girth is legendary, and whose success (losing 110 pounds on Weight Watchers) and failure (gaining it all back) at controlling his weight have been well-chronicled in the local press. He it, as it turns out, a really and truly, no kidding, genuinely nice guy.
photograph by clay tomas
John Grisanti loves life, and puts a great deal of stock in being that “nice guy.” He’s raised over $90,000 for St. Jude (through wine-tasting dinners at which guests consumed record-breakingly expensive Chateau Lafite wines Grisanti bought at auction, and he’s the founder of UNICO, an Italian-American service organization. And while most public figures assume that some animosity from a few people goes with the territory, Gristanti honestly wants to be liked by everyone.
“It bothers me sometimes,” he begins, “I find out something that someone might not like about me. Everybody has somebody who doesn’t like ’em, I don’t care who he is. But that really bothers me. Not everyone likes me, and I know that. I try not to let that happen, but it’s inevitable; it’s going to happen.”
For all his public popularity, however, John Grisanti hasn’t collected scads of friends like he has bottles of wine. Dolores explains: “The hours that John has had to put in over the year to develop an outside social life, and what little time he did have we spent together or spent with family. We know a lot of people, but we just don’t have a group of close friends.”
In true Italian style, the Grisantis are a family family. Their children — John Jr., Dolores (nicknamed “Dodo” who, with her husband, Peter Katsotis, runs Grisanti’s East), and David (who lives at home, says his dad, because he has determined that the rent is a lot cheaper here) — are all in the family business, which makes Papa awfully proud. “Of all the family happiness, that makes us happier than anything, that they’re carrying on the tradition.”
Weekends and free time are spent with family-cooking out, using the pool, eating out. Eating out? Where do the Grisantis go when they eat out? “I knew that question was coming,” says John, “who names Chez Philippe, Dux, Monte’s, Bill and Jim’s, and Coletta’s among his favorites. But Dolores tells where you’ll find him most: With grandchildren (two-year-old George and three-month-old John, daughter Dolores’ children, we have found that Piccadilly is the best. You get in quickly and we can put George in a high chair and get his food quickly.”
“If we take him to a restaurant to eat,” says John, “he’ll drive you nuts before the food gets there, so a cafeteria’s the best.”
With the children on hand to hold down the business fort, the Grisantis are traveling more lately, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for business. (John is called to judge a large number of wine contests these days.) Their itineraries have included Hawaii, the Bahamas, Mexico, London, and Paris. Dolores’ favorites were Washington, DC, and her tour of the White House, and a tour of the Grand Canyon in a small plane. “When we went over the rim and dipped down into there,” she says, “it brought tears to my eyes; it’s that magnificent.”
For John, visiting his father’s hometown near Lucca, Italy, was a high point; a prized possession is a painting of the house in which his dad grew up. Another opportunity the Grisantis had, that the rest of us mere mortals can only dream about, came during a tour of the wine country of France. They stayed at Chateau-Lafite one night — home of the most famous, and maybe the best wines in the world — and were treated to a banquet which included rare wines, along with a tour of the chateau’s wine cellars.
Memphians at all familiar with John Grisanti know how thrilling that trip must have been for him — he’s probably the city’s best-known oenophile. While the rest of us are happy sipping Gallo, he’s busy storing away old French or new California vintages in his private wine cellar. You get to his subterranean treasure cave via a narrow wrought-iron spiral staircase that’s decorated with wrought-iron grape clusters. The staircase walls are peppered with wine posters, labels, and pictures; at the bottom is a beautiful, not-too-big, not-too-small room, lined entirely with shelves of wine bottles. The temperature, kept at a constant 59 degrees, and the humidity, always 50 percent, are regulated by separate controls.
Grisanti began his love affair with wine while he was working in his father’s restaurant, Willie’s Grill, down on Main Street in the mid-Fifties. There was a liquor store in front, and Grisanti says, “I thought it would be a good idea to sell some wines from the liquor store to the restaurant customers.” Little by little, Grisanti educated his palate, where he is now an acknowledged expert. “I got a chunk of change down here,” he declares, gesturing to the full shelves and standing crates. Then he laughs about not knowing where everything is at. “I started cataloging all the wines one day, and then we opened a bottle of wine, and that ended the cataloging.”
He loves to show off the cellar, and tells of his favorite kind of entertaining — bringing folks home with him after the restaurant closes to sample the fruits of his cellar. “I’ll call Dolores,” he says, “and tell her not to wait up, and we’ll come in about 11:30 and we’ll go down into the cellar and raise holy hell down there, and she won’t hear a word we say.” He stops the jokes long enough to explain about judging wines by their clarity, bouquet and aroma, taste, and aftertaste, and speaks seriously of letting wine “roll down the side of your tongue.”
The visit nears an end. His joviality returns, and he makes a final friendly gesture. “I have a rule in my cellar,” he says, “that anyone who comes to visit for the first time gets to take home a bottle of wine.” That’s not surprising, coming from a man who’s made his living and fame by being a gracious host.”
