Johnny Carrabba's

For over 30 years, Carrabba’s has been Houston’s true neighborhood restaurant. Family owned and operated, the Original Carrabba’s on Kirby Drive opened on Dec. 26, 1986, with $500 in the cash register (a loan from Mr. C, Johnny’s dad), 94 seats, seven barstools, and a menu whose most expensive item was a $9.95 T-bone steak, and a glass of the best wine came in at a whopping $2.25.After the initial success of the restaurant- “lightning in a bottle,” Johnny has called it- a second location opened at Voss Road and Woodway Drive.

Eventually, the original Carrabba’s outgrew its 3,000 square feet and moved to a newer larger space. What began with a relatively simple concept- a casual Italian restaurant that featured a wood-burning pizza oven, big bowls of pasta, and an open kitchen-would become the heart of Houston’s dining scene.

But for all the changes Carrabba’s has undergone over the years, some things have remained constant: Our commitment to fantastic food, the warm, inviting, comfortable, family-oriented feeling of our restaurants, mature servers who understand the value of impressing and appreciating our guests, and a staff that has fun and knows our customers by name .We don’t operate our restaurants based on lessons learned in some fancy cooking school or business book. We operate them based on heart and soul, and a belief that our job at the end of the day is to give our guests an experience they’ll love-and remember.

And that’s what we do everyday.

Grace

Welcome to Grace’s!

This restaurant is dedicated to my late grandmother, Grace Mandola. My grandmother was a strong, amazing woman who worked well into her nineties.

She was also a lady who lived for her family.Grace was the best cook that I have ever known, and I have been fortunate enough to have met a lot of great chefs, but my grandmother was magical in the kitchen. Her Sunday lunches were over the top. She would bake bread on Saturdays and start her tomato sauce, “Suga,” in the wee hours of the morning. This sauce would have tons of braised meats, meatballs, and just the right amount of basil.

She would also have baked eggplant, stuffed artichokes, a good green salad, and to top it all off, she always had a port roast or fried chicken .After describing the Sunday meal, you can see that she was 100% Sicilian, but when you add the roast adthe fried chicken, you can also see that she was proud to be an American. Not only was she great with Italian food she was also very good with American food.

And guess what? She was raised by Sicilian immigrants that happened to settle in Louisiana, the best of three worlds, Italian, American and Louisana. Ha! If it wasn’t’ for Grace, we Houstonians would have never had the opportunity to have eaten at restaurants like Nino’s, Vincent’s Tony Mandola’s, Damian’s or Carrabba’s. My grandmother taught all of her family about good food, but mor importantly, she instilled hospitality and something even more thanthat, she taught us to cook from the heart. Cooking from the heart is always the most important ingredient.

I hope that you enjoy Grace’s, Johnny Carrabba.

P.S. I could never that her enough!