Mario Romano wears his crown as the grandpapa of Glasgow's Italian eating-out scene with a smile - and a shrug.
The 69-year-old is much too busy planning his next big project to rest on his laurels. This tanned and tactile Neapolitan, who first came to Glasgow in 1961 at the age of 21, has no intentions of resting up and giving way to the new generation. Next month he will open his latest venture, a 130-cover mid-priced restaurant and champagne bar called Mediterraneo, on Ingram Street on a ground-floor site that dominates the city's Italian quarter. "I love what I'm doing, and enthusiasm is the key to success," he says simply. "This is the first new place I have bought for five years, and it has put a smile back on my face."
Even in the middle of the economic recession Romano believes that people still want to eat out, if less often than usual. "There are still people out there making money, and those who aren't still want something new," he said.
Although business is down generally by 10% to 15%, he believes the recession will come to an end, and that the overall price tag of £2.3m for the building and fit-out is thus a bargain: if he had bought it just six months ago, he says it would have cost him about £400,000 more.
Mediterraneo will occupy the entire ground floor of the Victorian building that stands between Glassford Street and the old Sheriff Court, and will have floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows.
As well as a champagne bar serving Krug, Dom Perignon and Cristal with fresh oysters and smoked salmon, it will boast a state-of-the-art open kitchen that will be the largest in any stand-alone restaurant in Scotland. Under head chef Angelo Musio its menu will specialise in simply-prepared fresh fish and seafood sourced from Scottish waters by Glasgow supplier Bernard Corrigan, as well as locally produced meat and chicken.
"Glasgow has come a long way from the 1960s, when customers would smother their spaghetti bolognaise in tomato ketchup," says Romano. "When I started out Glaswegians were more used to steak and chips at Stakis or sausage suppers from their local Italian cafe, and their diet was very meat-based, but I found them to be very willing to try out the fresh new dishes were bringing in from the Mediterranean." Even so, he remembers that within hours of arriving in the smog-smothered city as a dapper Zurich hotel school graduate, his pristine white shirt had turned black.
The enterprising Romano, whose father was also a chef in Naples, has owned new fewer than 36 restaurants in and around Glasgow. The first of these was Sorrento, just up from the former Ivanhoe Hotel in Buchanan Street, which he bought in 1963.
The Vesuvio dinner-dance restaurant followed in 1965, O Sole Mio in 1968, and the hugely popular Spaghetti House in Sauchiehall Street in 1976. This, he says, was so busy serving up to 350 customers a day that he had to close at 8pm because he'd run out of food.
L'Ariosto, Mamma Mia, Sanino, Bar Milano and the North Rotunda - his biggest project to date - were all part of his portfolio, as were the Redhurst Hotel at Eastwood Toll and Manor Park in Prestwick. His last purchase was Bar Milano at Eastwood Toll, which he purchased from Alex Knight, husband of Carole Smillie, in 2003.
Romano stopped being a chef in the 1980s and still owns an impressive empire of seven of these venues, including La Luciano in Bothwell and the Venue in Newton Mearns, all currently on long-term leases.
Now he is concentrating on expanding his business interests. He is bullish in the face of competition from younger generations of Glasgow's other Scots-Italian dynasties, who are all seeing new opportunities in the recession.
Sandro and Stefano Giovanazzi, whose father Angelo opened the fine-dining La Parmigiana in 1978, expanded their empire of mid-priced Paperino's restaurants in June this year with a new outlet at 78 St Vincent Street.
Mario Gizzi, owner of the Di Maggio's chain, who also runs l'Ariosto, Amaroni and Cafe Andaluz, plans to expand his own empire with a new two-storey restaurant in nearby St Vincent Place.
The trio of long-established Sarti's restaurants are all within walking distance of Mediterraneo. Dino's, where Romano got his first job at £15 a week when he arrived in Glasgow all those years ago, is still going strong, serving over 300 diners every day in its Sauchiehall Street branch. Doesn't he feel there is a danger that he will be run out of town?
"If you thought about the competition all the time you'd end up doing nothing, and in any case I don't see other Italian families as rivals," he says. He has already earmarked another site which he hopes will become his 38th venture, but will not say where it is, or indeed if he will stop when he reaches his 40th.
Romano is from a family of eight children and has three daughters of his own - none of whom are due to follow him into the business. Carla is a presenter with GMTV, based in Los Angeles, Claudia is in the London property business, and Monica lives in Milan and is married to the AC Milan and former Rangers midfielder Rino Gattuso.
"I am not the head of a restaurant dynasty," says their father. "I created and built up my empire all by myself. With Mediterraneo I am doing my own thing, just as I have always done. With the help of a few friends, of course."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article