PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE
The Valle family (from left): Olivia Alberson, Elizabeth Hankins, Tammy Valle, Louie Valle, and Vincent Valle.
Valle’s is synonymous with tantalizing lasagna, pizzas, and sandwiches. But the Whitehaven restaurant is also synonymous with regular customers. Some people eat at Valle’s four or five days a week, says owner Louie Valle. On a recent Monday, Bryant and Jessica Tucker were dining on Rotel chicken spaghetti in the spacious dining room. Bryant, 45, has been eating at Valle’s since he was a teenager, and was introducing his wife to the restaurant. Now, Jessica is a Valle’s fan, too.
Louie Valle’s parents, the late Pat and Ray Valle, and his sister and brother-in-law, Doris and Bill Fragale, opened what was then known as Valle’s Italian Rebel in 1977 in a converted firehouse at the same location. “My dad moved from Ohio,” Louie says. “He had some restaurant experience, but worked in construction at the time. He converted this old fire station into a restaurant.”
Brandon Valle, Louie’s son, found a photo of the old Whitehaven fire station, which appears to have been Engine Company No. 42, Louie says. “That’s when Whitehaven was annexed by Memphis. They built a big station up the street and shut this one down.”
Louie has worked at Valle’s since it opened when he was 16; he says, “I just cooked and cleaned.” Their recipes come from his grandmother, Louie says.
Valle’s has exclusively served lunch for about 28 years. They used to serve dinner, but Louie says, “It got to where we just didn’t do a whole lot of dinner business.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE
A lunchtime crowd — many of them regular customers — enjoys a classic Italian meal.
Back in the day, when “We had a different crowd,” they served beer, had a shuffleboard table, and customers could play music on a jukebox as well as eat dinner. Dinner eventually went by the wayside — but they still have the jukebox. “It doesn’t work. It’s like a time capsule sitting here.”
The menu was smaller back in the day, only featuring spaghetti, lasagna, pizza, salads, and four sandwiches. The menu still includes all their original items, but it “has tripled since then.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE
The author enjoys an enormous helping of lasagna.
The original sandwiches are the meatball, the hero, roast beef, and the “Spicy Italian Sandwich,” which is made of salami, capicola, lettuce, and Italian dressing, all mingling on a hoagie roll — and not just any roll, either.
Their homemade white bread “has always been the heart of our business,” says Louie. “No one else has our bread.”
Louie, who majored in restaurant management at Northwest Mississippi Community College, took over Valle’s seven years ago. His parents only worked at the restaurant for a while to help out his sister and her husband. “My dad didn’t stick with it long at all. He had his construction business.”
As time passed, Louie’s sister and brother-in-law “didn’t really want to do it anymore. They offered it to me, and I jumped on it. I liked what I did. I liked the idea of being able to take it over.”
He basically stayed at the restaurant nonstop. “I just pretty much lived here. From open to close, eight in the morning until ten and eleven at night. I think that was what kind of grew it. Just being here, being hands-on, meeting the customers.”
Louie began some innovations, including running daily specials — which helped business to pick up. Over the years, he added new menu items, including the spicy Italian sandwich as well as their muffuletta, which “really took off.”
Louie also changed Valle’s name and signage. His dad originally wanted to call the restaurant Fonzie’s. “Back then, Happy Days was popular.”
But his dad settled on “Valle’s Italian Rebel.” Their sign depicted a mustachioed man wearing a Civil War Confederate uniform.
Louie wasn’t comfortable with the word “Rebel” or the man in the uniform. “I had a couple of customers say something to me. They told me how it offended them. I started thinking about it — I never really had before.”
He removed “Italian Rebel” from their name, and the uniform from the little man, who now wears a chef’s hat and jacket. But people still refer to the restaurant as “Italian Rebel” or just “The Rebel,” Louie says. “Because that’s what everybody knows us by.”
In 2000, Louie opened a Valle’s in Olive Branch, Mississippi. It lasted seven years. “It didn’t make it down there.”
Asked what sets Valle’s apart from other restaurants, Louie says it’s simply their “homemade food.” There aren’t as many “family-type restaurants” around as there used to be, he says. “When we first opened, this was like a restaurant strip all the way to Airways. Nothing but restaurants. They’ve all been gone for a while. What keeps us going is [customers] can tell it’s homemade. They smell it when they walk in. They smell the bread. The great sauce cooking. They know it’s authentic.”
And then there are those regular customers. Like Mike Burkett and the employees from his heating and air conditioning business, Major League Mechanical. A group of eight of them gathered at lunch recently. They were honoring the late Steve Neal, a colleague of theirs who regularly ate at Valle’s, Burkett says. Neal introduced all of them to Valle’s, he says.
And, adds Benjamin Bowen, who was at the table, “The tradition will live on with us.”
Valle’s, 1636 Winchester Road
