Gianni’s celebrates 25 years of Italian cuisine

Published 5:29 pm Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Stepping into Gianni’s Ristorante Italiano in Everett, visitors may catch an earful of Italian opera followed by the smooth stylings of crooner Michael Buble before being seated in an intimately lit dining area decorated with posters from Italian cinema and swags of dried garlic bulbs.

Their server will hand them a six-fold menu filled with house specialties, old-time Italian favorites, pizza and desserts from which to choose. Will it be Cannelloni Alla Sorrentina — homemade crepes filled with veal, chicken and ricotta cheese and topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella? Or perhaps the Ippoglosso — fresh halibut lightly sautéed and baked in butter, garlic, white wine sauce with fresh basil?

The current hit among regulars is the Pollo Pistaccio — boneless chicken, mushrooms and sweet baby peas cooked in butter and garlic before being simmered in Frangelico liqueur, roasted pistachio and cream.

“That’s a real favorite lately. People come in and they ‘need their fix,’ that’s how they put it,” said Gianni Mottola, whose restaurant has been supplying the area’s “fix” for authentic Italian cuisine for a quarter century, marking its 25th anniversary in May.

While young adults and their children can be found among the clientele, Mottola said baby boomers are the regulars who have been coming to the restaurant two to three times a week for years.

“The best compliment that I’ve had from these people is that ‘I’ve never had a bad meal here.’ … That’s an honor and a real great compliment,” he said, adding that one New York regular, actor Enrico Colantoni, likens the rustic, cozy Gianni’s “to a Sunday summer in Brooklyn.”

In all its years of operation, Gianni’s menu hasn’t changed much “other than we keep adding to it,” said Mottola, who learned the restaurant ropes from his parents, Vince and Ada Mottola.

The elder Mottolas emigrated from Naples, Italy, to the Puget Sound area in 1954, opening their first restaurant soon thereafter and growing it to Vince’s Italian Restaurant chain now operating in south King and north Pierce counties.

When Gianni Mottola decided to leave the family business, he ventured outside the restaurant chain’s market area and looked north to Snohomish County.

“I didn’t know anything about Snohomish County. I grew up in Rainier Valley, and when I wasn’t there, I was living in Italy,” Mottola said. “I didn’t know anything about Everett; I just knew that it was on the way to Vancouver. I opened the phone book and saw that there weren’t any Italian restaurants. It was ripe for the picking.”

At the time, the area was coming off the cusp of a very heavy recession, Mottola recalled, so there was a lot of real estate from which to choose. He selected property along Evergreen Way, a bustling thoroughfare even then. It’s the same building, at 5030 Evergreen Way, that the restaurant resides in now.

An expansion project in 1990 added a dining room for banquets, rehearsal dinners, receptions and other meetings, but the red booths that line the walls in the original space came with the building, Mottola said of the eatery, which can seat 100.

While the restaurant’s space and menu have grown over time, the staff size has stayed under a dozen.

“There were probably seven or eight employees (in the beginning),” he said. “I run a real tight ship. I’m an old-school employer and gravitate toward people who are old-school restaurant workers who know how to multi-task and have a relationship with the kitchen.”

Among the 10 now on staff at Gianni’s are the owner’s sons, Jake and Joey.

“I didn’t expect that,” Mottola said of having his own children taking an interest in the restaurant. “Even though I learned the trade from my parents … I always told the boys I wanted to be their father first, not their boss first.”

But 21-year-old Jake has an affinity for the kitchen.

“He’s learned quite a bit in a short amount of time,” Mottola said. “I’m very proud of him; he’s worked very hard. He wants to carry on the legacy, which just blew my mind.”

And Joey, nearly 20, enjoys working the dining room, where Gianni himself often can be found.

“I’m a performer,” said the longtime drummer and singer. “… Having a restaurant was another extension of that as far as it’s another aspect of being on stage. The dining room is my stage.”