Family-run since 1988.
In 1988 Brady Street had more dark windows than lit ones. Sal and Rosa Vitale signed the lease anyway, with seventy seats and Rosa's Sunday gravy. Their daughter Gia grew up at table 12. Now she runs the pass, Rosa still tastes the gravy on Sunday mornings, and Sal still sits at table 4 on Tuesdays.
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In 1988 Brady Street had more dark windows than lit ones. Sal Vitale, who grew up in the old Italian Third Ward, and Rosa, who brought her mother's gravy recipe with her, signed a lease anyway. They had seventy seats, one stove that ran hot on the left, and a six-year-old named Gia doing her homework at table 12.
Rosa started the gravy at nine every Sunday morning: pork ribs browned first, then sausage, then the meatballs, then the braciole tied with kitchen string, all of it going low and slow until the house smelled like a holiday. Neighbors started knocking on the back door to ask what was cooking. By the end of that first year they were coming in the front.
Thirty-eight years later the street is full again, and so is our room on a Saturday night. Gia runs the pass now. Rosa still comes in Sunday mornings to taste the gravy and tell the kitchen it needs more basil. Sal still sits at table 4 on Tuesdays, and he will tell you the meatballs were bigger in 1988. They were not.
We gave the place a fresh coat: a new menu you can actually read, a website that knows what year it is. The recipes stayed exactly where they were.
Vitale's is family-run since 1988, on Brady Street, and the table is still the point. Pull up a chair.
