DINING OUT:
GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK
at Yorktown Circle

6430 Yorktown Circle
East Syracuse
Ph. 432-4614
Fax 432-4615

See Map

by Sue Brode

The History of a Syracuse Dining Tradition and The Creation of a Classic New Restaurant

Braised beef ribs or Veal Osso Bucco?
Decisions, Decisions!

It's the kind of difficult choice (though either way, you win big) that you'll need to make if and when you visit GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK, just off Carrier Circle. Many other haute cuisine items vie for your attention, which may come as something of a surprise to those many long-term CNY residents who have always associated the 'Grimaldi' name with high quality family-style Italian food. Well, the Italian approach is still there/here, though now its been augmented by more uniquely Tuscan touches as well. And the night when we visited last month, there were indeed several full families enjoying the food.

Make no mistake about it, though, this relatively new property is a class act - an excellent fine-food restaurant with handsome furnishings that can more than hold its own against any of the other fine spots that have made their reputation hereabouts in the past several years.
That's why the name is not simply GRIMALDI'S. The LUNA PARK addition suggests this is something new and different. Still, the GRIMALDI'S name recalls a long-term tradition of quality and abundance.

The word that the owners are now getting out is that here, you get the best of both worlds.
So how did it all come about?

Rita Grimaldi comes from a long line of legendary restaurateurs. Her grandparents were Fred and Rita, who created the original GRIMALDI'S in Utica back in 1943. The family-oriented Italian cuisine was excellent enough to bring many Syracusans driving all the way there, even though it took the better part of an hour, to partake of the exquisite sauce and bountiful portions of pasta and varied chicken, veal, and seafood dishes.

So it was only natural that, with their reputation preceding it, the Grimaldi family would bring their acclaimed Italian fare to Syracuse. The first GRIMALDI'S opened in 1968 on Erie Boulevard, and soon became something of an institution hereabouts.

Like the Utica property, Syracuse's GRIMALDI'S was a family oriented, no nonsense kind of a place. When Rita's grandparents passed away, management of the restaurant passed on to her father. Then, about ten years ago, the Syracuse GRIMALDI'S moved over to Yorktown Circle, where it is located now. At that point, it remained in the family, so the name remained the same for a while.

After about two years, the restaurant was leased by Anthony Rinaldi, who changed the name to Anthony's.

A little more than ten months ago, the restaurant returned to the Grimaldi fold. But Rita understood that the times have changed, and if it were time to revive the Grimaldi's tradition, then it was also time to do something new.

That's when fate threw Rita together with Walter Marrotta.

Walter hails from Utica, and attended the legendary Culinary Institute of America. After graduation, he returned to CNY and began working at Café Canole, where he cooked and also developed a great talent for preparing pastries. Walter's career took him to Boston for about a year, where he worked at two fine restaurants, Pingnolli and Viva Biba. Walter was employed in various capacities, most often as sauté cook.

At each property where he was employed, Walter learned something new and added it to his repertoire - whether this constituted an approach toward an individual item that he hadn't thought of or a specific recipe that he could take and then add his own concepts.

Along the way, he developed some strong opinions as to what really does constitute fine cuisine: "the freshest ingredients, always. And not to overpower anything with too many spices or (highly/richly flavored) sauces." Chefs who don't necessarily purchase the finest beef, pork, veal and seafood will use that sort of trick to hide the lack of quality of their basic ingredients. Walter absolutely rejected such a cost-cutting approach and, after finding the finest basic ingredients wherever he happens to be working, then comes up with more subtle sauces that augment the high quality and show it off to the delight of those accustomed to fine dining.

"Italian cuisine is light fresh flavors," Walter explained, and a sauce or spice should only enhance the high quality of what is already there.

"I finished getting a business degree at Suny Utica/ Rome," Walter recalled, "and wanted to be the owner of a restaurant where I worked for myself." For the time being, though, that seemed like only a distant dream. So Walter went to work at the ever-expanding TURNING STONE CASINO as assistant pastry chef.

Also working there at the same time, precipitously enough, was Rita Grimaldi. She was an old friend of Walter's family, he of hers. so they immediately began sharing ideas for what each wanted to do in the future - and it turned out to be pretty much the same thing.

Rita then worked as the manager at WILDFLOWERS, the "high end restaurant at the lodge," Walter recalled. "I did all the pastries - so that's where we met. And how eventually this place (GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK) came about. Rita wanted to go into her own business and so did I, and so it happened."
This was when Rita first got the idea of taking her family's property at Yorktown back and creating a new restaurant which would allow her own dream to revive the great GRIMALDI'S tradition, and Walter's parallel dream to create his high-end restaurant called LUNA PARK, and for the two to come together as GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK.

"While at the TURNING STONE, we talked together," Rita recalls, "and Walter showed me a menu he had composed." Rita was impressed enough to show it to her dad, and Fred said that maybe at some time in the future this might work out. Then, the property at Yorktown became available, and a dream (two dreams, actually) began to take form as a single reality, once Rita and Walter convinced Fred that they could create something unique and special on the CNY restaurant scene.

Which is precisely what they've done.

"The menu is essentially Walter's," Rita told us in a phone interview, "though little by little, I've had more output." The look of the place - a kind of understated elegance - is all Rita's. "What we wanted to offer people was the old Grimaldi's reputation for high quality and family-style hospitality but with a new menu and new approach."

This is, after all, the 21st century. For better or worse, things are different today. And that includes the restaurant business.

A quarter-century ago, Syracuse was extremely unsophisticated in terms of its offerings. At that time, there were few interesting fine-dining restaurants. What people wanted was good food and plenty of it at an affordable price, in the simplest of settings. Steak houses, Asian restaurants, and Italian family trattoria restaurants abounded. Most of them were first-rate - in terms of what they promised and delivered.

Then, things began to change.

One by one, sophisticated restaurants began to pop up, offer everything from Thai cuisine to sophisticated European and international cuisines.

Not that there aren't plenty of those simple family oriented neighborhood restaurants still around. And most of them remain terrific. The point is that Rita realized this would not be the right time to go back into competition with those other Italian family restaurants - particularly at a time when the OLIVE GARDEN chain, with its huge resources and non-stop TV advertising, has put a number of such local places (even some of the best, and most long term, of them) out of business.

Sad, indeed. But true.

So Rita and Walter realized that the individually-owned restaurants that are thriving in Syracuse today are the ones that do indeed keep the prices down to an affordable level, and which are happy to have families arrive, yet do offer 'signature' food - the expression of a single person (or in this case two people) who have a unique and appealing idea as to what ought to be served at their property as compared to anywhere else in town.

Now, the need is to get the word out and around. Rita and Walter are doing that through TV advertisements. And this article ought to help too.

Equally important and effective is word of mouth: People who have tried GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK speak in glowing terms of what they encounter, as my husband and I did after visiting with our son. The salads are fresh as can be, with a sophisticated mixing of greens, and the dressings each feature a unique variation on whatever theme you request. Presentations are grand: The food looks as well as tastes great. The steaks are of the highest quality and perfectly prepared to your request.

And the surroundings are delightful - like the food, classy in an understated kind of way rather than overbearing. What Rita has done with the look and the atmosphere perfectly compliments what Walter has done with the cuisine: There's no need to be 'showy' on the surface when your basic ingredients are great and they only need the most subtle form of enhancement.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: Where else in Syracuse can you find an item as sophisticated as Veal Osso Bucco on the menu every day, and not just as an occasional special?

Catering is available on and off site. "We do many parties," Rita told us, "everything from rehearsal dinners to baby showers and bridal showers." Best of all, they can easily adjust to specific needs and accommodate their menu to a specific request.

"Walter can cater to dietary considerations as well," Rita told us. The result is fine dining in a casual (though quietly classy) atmosphere. You'll find elegant tableware here and the entire white tablecloth approach, yet the menu items - while not cheap - are all reasonably priced, making this perfect for people who want something special within a limited budget.

It isn't necessary, by the way, to order a full dinner. For those in the mood for lighter fare, or those who want to find a special place for a meal but are watching their budgets very carefully, Risotto is a signature dish, and the home-made pizza ("upscale pizza") is thick-crust style.
As Rita says: "for the new GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK, the whole concept was to create fun fair. Yes, I want people to be able to come in and appreciate the white tablecloth and the high-quality crystal glasses, yet for it to be casual at the same time. So they can bring the kids in and still also be pampered a bit. 'Fun fare' was always the idea behind everything that Walter and I wanted to create here. Also, I want to bring out the simplicity of Italian cuisine at its very best: fresh ingredients. Try the chicken or the bass that I might run for a special, or the strip steak. And know for certain that it was never frozen, but brought in that day and not smothered in sauce." (They do, in fact, have excellent sauces, which you can have served on the side to add to the quality of the basic ingredients.)

Where does the 'luna park' name come from? "I was telling a friend about the project," Walter recalls. "A friend from Italy. He and I brainstormed and came up with this idea. Luna's the moon, of course, and 'park' communicates the idea of a place for relaxing, pleasure. I want the businessmen to come in, sit down and have a meal, but I want a family of four to come in too. And the husband and wife." Such a couple may luxuriate with a glass of fine wine from the impressive list, yet if they choose to bring the kids with them rather than hire a babysitter, Walter can accommodate that too.

"Tuscan cuisine," Walter explained, is the order of the day here. "I promote a lot of fish, olive oils, not a lot of butters, everything very fresh. Tuscany is one of the largest regions of Italy, so that made it easy for me to use more dishes than, say, if I had chosen a Roman or Venetian style, which would have led to a restaurant that is much more limited as to the variety of dishes you can serve." Such restaurants may be wonderful, but Walter sensed that "in upstate New York, I think I need to give people a larger variety."

Back to the catering: As Walter's background is as a pastry chef, he loves doing parties so that he can show off his talent and expertise with these items. Biscotti is available here, and paste cookies. They are also sold by the pound, for people who enjoy them at dinner or a catered affair usually want to take some home.

For more information, reservations or driving directions, call 432-4614. Please mention that you read about GRIMALDI'S LUNA PARK in the Dining Out column of "Table Hopping."

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