Photos by Chris Bassett VinciToroio's

VinciTorio’s Restaurant
1835 E. Elliot Road, Tempe
480-820-2786


Our restaurant scene may be a little short in the diversity department, but if there’s one thing we’ve never lacked for, it’s Italian restaurants. You want pasta? We’ve got it up the wazoo, buried under a slab of melted mozzarella, most likely – which is to say our local Italian food is Americanized in much the same way as our local Mexican food. Excluding six to 10 restaurants (most of them upscale), our hundreds of Italian food options are soporifically similar and maddeningly mediocre, which is one reason I seldom review them. They bore me beyond comprehension.
So imagine my surprise, 10 minutes into my first meal at VinciTorio’s (pronounced Vin-chee-torio’s), to discover that I’m feeling hopeful and sort of fluttery, my personal indicator of new restaurant-love. By that time, my friend and I had ordered wine from a list that’s almost exclusively Italian and emptied the basket of its house-baked focaccia and crusty garlic bread. Life (or at least dinner) seemed full of promise.
As I looked around the crowded L-shaped dining room, it occurred to me that VinciTorio’s matches my vision of the perfect neighborhood Italian restaurant – bustling, cheerful, beloved by one and all. At one table, a grandpa dandled a baby on his knee, and at another, a 20-ish twosome made goo-goo eyes at each other over cocktails. In the middle of the room, a gray-haired couple celebrated their anniversary with family and friends, while over in the corner, three extravagantly perfumed young things, dressed for Girls Night Out, fortified themselves with pizza.

VinciTorio’s burrata and prosciutto appetizer

Meanwhile, the restaurant itself looks charming but not too upscale, cozy but not too kitschy – the sort of place where people relax and feel at home. Italian landscape paintings, faux-finished walls, exposed brick, and wreaths of grape leaves create old-school gentility, while dozens of framed family pictures, hung around the entryway and small bar area, add an ultra-personal touch. Besides casual group photos, I found portraits of the guy who seated us (owner Mario Vincitorio, it turns out) at various stages and ages – as a small boy (probably in kindergarten or first grade) and again as a young man on the cusp of adulthood. This restaurant is Mario’s life, and he puts his life on its walls.
I’m guessing Mario’s brother, Nunzio, who bakes the bread and makes pastas and desserts for the restaurant, is up there somewhere, too, because VinciTorio’s is clearly a family affair, which not only includes Mario’s life and business partner Ginger Anderson (who outfitted the place with pieces from her Gold Canyon store, Ancient Visions Rustic Home Furnishings), but also its servers, who harmonize beautifully on “Happy Birthday,” leaving special occasion opera singing exclusively to their comrade-in-arms, the velvet-throated Edson.