photograph by michael donahue
Jerry Coletta
Dining at Coletta’s Italian Restaurant on South Parkway is like reuniting with old friends. You’re happy to see them, and no matter how many years have passed, you quickly slide into comfortable familiarity.
On a recent night at Coletta’s, folks enjoyed the famous lasagna, barbecue pizza, and other items. But so many aspects besides the food define the restaurant: There’s the red-padded bar, and the “Blue Room” with the concrete statue of the goddess Diana. There are two paintings by Italian artist Nello Jovine — one that owner Jerry Coletta calls Gypsy Woman and the other Two Children — that hang in the main dining room. Coletta’s dad, the late Horest Coletta, bought them at a Memphis gallery.
Another Jovine painting, which Jerry called Little Old Wine Drinker, was at the old Summer Avenue location, but it burned along with that version of the restaurant in a 1996 fire.
photograph by Michael Donahue
Sharlene Burns has worked at Coletta’s for 51 years.
Then there’s “The Elvis Room,” with its cardboard cutout of Elvis in his gold lamé suit and other memories of the King.
The main dining room originally was the living quarters for the Coletta family when Jerry’s grandfather, Emil Coletta, owned the restaurant. Emil, an Italian immigrant, “came over to Ellis Island in 1918,” says Jerry. “My grandfather started the place. We’re celebrating the 100th anniversary this year.”
In addition to selling Italian food, Emil “made his own ice cream. And he’d go around the neighborhood selling ice cream bars.”
Emil originally called his business the “Suburban Ice Cream Co.” because it was located in what were once the Memphis suburbs.
In the late ’40s, Horest took over the restaurant. He stopped making ice cream and switched to Italian food.
photograph courtesy jerry coletta
Coletta’s Italian Restaurant on South Parkway in the 1930s. Note the original name of the business — Suburban Ice Cream Co. — above the door.
Asked if the restaurant looks the same now as it did in the early days, Jerry says, “Heavens no. We have pictures of the old building and it almost looked like a shack back in the ’20s. In the early ’50s, we remodeled the place, put on a brick exterior, and changed the looks quite a bit.”
The bar, which was added in the 1970s, is located in the oldest part of Coletta’s. “That’s the original restaurant,” he says, “where the bar is today.” Horest moved out of the restaurant in the late 1940s and “we changed the living quarters into the dining room.”
“The Blue Room” was also added in the ’70s. “It was my mother’s idea,” says Jerry. “She had been in New Orleans, and we copied it after the lobby of that city’s Saenger Theatre. It was supposed to look like an outdoor patio.”
Jerry began working at the restaurant when he was 7 or 8 years old. “As a young boy,” he recalls, “I used to stand on Coca-Cola cases and cashier for my dad.”
The recipes are basically the same as when Emil owned the restaurant. “Some of them have been adapted a little bit,” says Jerry, “but my dad added pizza in the early ’50s. We had sailors from the Millington navy base come in and they were asking for pizza. And my dad didn’t know what pizza was. Back then they only had it in Chicago and New York. It was a new type of food for America. He went to Chicago to learn how to make pizza and he put it on the menu.”
photograph by kathy mclallen
When it wasn’t selling well, Horest “came up with the idea of barbecue pizza. That sparked interest in pizza. It remains our signature item today. And it was Elvis’ favorite pizza.” When Elvis was alive, Priscilla used to “be in every week bringing pizzas back to Graceland.”
Priscilla Presley still stops by the restaurant when she’s in town. “About a year before her death, Lisa Marie was in,” says Jerry. “They both signed menus for us.”
Chicken wings, which Coletta’s introduced to the menu 15 or 20 years ago, are their most recent addition. “We kept getting requests for them.”
Coletta’s opened a second location at 4940 Summer Avenue in 1954, but didn’t rebuild on that site after the structure burned in ’96. Instead, they opened the 2850 Appling Road location in November 1998. Stephen and Lisa Coletta, and Kristina Coletta Holland, children of Jerry and his wife, Diana (who worked at the South Parkway location for 25 years), run the place.
The food, decor, and ambience aren’t all that stays the same on South Parkway. The restaurant has many long-time employees, including Sharlene Burns, who has worked at Coletta’s for 51 years.
“I started out as a waitress,” says Sharlene, 70. “Then bartending, and then wound up having keys to the restaurant at an early age managing it. I do it all. A jack of all trades.”
What sets Coletta’s apart from other restaurants? “It’s just like a family,” says Sharlene. “And they treat you like family.”
Coletta’s is located at 1063 South Parkway East and 2850 Appling Road.
