Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Giovanni Gabriele with his son Frank
Another longtime St. Louis restaurateur has died: Giovanni Gabriele passed away June 10 at age 78. A memorial service was held June 15.
Gabriele opened Giovanni’s on the Hill in 1973, a decade after emigrating from Palermo, Sicily. He arrived in this country with a dime in his pocket and lived the American dream, says his oldest son, Carmelo. Gabriele married one of the five Manno sisters, whose husbands all ended up owning restaurants of their own. (So did the Manno brother, Paul.)
Giovanni’s was an elegant, white-tablecloth restaurant at the corner of Shaw and Marconi. The hushed atmosphere often slid away with the sound of people having a good time with fine food and wine. Even on quiet nights inside the pink walls, the sound of laughter would sometimes roll down the stairs from the private rooms. From the moment the restaurant opened, Gabriele intended it to be that way.
New York restaurant kingpin and St. Louis native Danny Meyer wrote of Giovanni’s, “Giovanni Gabriele made me feel like a young VIP in front of my dates.” Many visited Giovanni's to celebrate such special occasions as college graduations and anniversaries.
It was as much about the hospitality, the Gabriele family says, as the food. The dishes, however, were often remarkable—notably the veal and such fine seafood as swordfish—but the pastas often resonated.
In 1981, Gabriele was invited to participate in a dinner at President Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration. His contribution: a dish with farfalle, the bow tie-shaped pasta, with hot-smoked salmon and Parmigiano cheese.
Another pasta dish, Pappardelle alla Bella Oprah, came out of a relatively unexpected visit from Oprah Winfrey and a small group, who ate downstairs with the typical patrons. The restaurant did have to move some previously occupied tables around to get her group together—but Oprah sent champagne to everyone who moved, recalls Carmelo.
While Gabriele had heard of Oprah, he did once turn down a touring musician's request for a private room. Fortunately, the next generation of Gabrieles quickly set him straight, and Sir Paul McCartney got an upstairs room and dinner.
In his later years, Gabriele was reluctant to hand over the reins of the restaurant to his competent sons Carmelo and Frank, who have also established Il Bel Lago in Creve Coeur and Giovanni's Kitchen in Ladue. Gabriele eventually found a home in Fort Lauderdale overlooking the water. (Giovanni had been in the Italian Merchant Marine in his younger days.)
In 2017, the restaurant closed following an electrical fire, though he made his sons promise to “get the lights back on.”
