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Co-owner Gip Dammone, 55, said: "When we first opened, people used to ask things like, 'has that got garlic in it?' and 'it's not too spicy, is it?' Thirty-odd years down the line, people are far more educated and more concerned about the provenance of food."
Salvo's on Otley Road, Headingley is virtually a landmark in the city and a byword for quality, but its reputation is hard won.
Last year, they beat off more than 50 other Italian restaurants across the UK to win Gordon Ramsay's F-Word 'best Italian restaurant' award.
Now they are planning to expand the existing restaurant and mark their 35th anniversary in style.
The restaurant itself was founded by the late Salvatore Dammone. He came from a small Sicilian farming village called Palagonia where people kept themselves to themselves and seldom moved from the area. But Salvotore was different.
Son and co-owner of Salvo's John, 50, explained: "In those days, there was very much a sense of life revolving solely around the local church. It's what we would call campanilismo, which means 'within earshot of the bell tower.' If you married someone from the next village, they were considered a foreigner. I have an aunt in her 70s who, until three years ago, had never been outside Sicily.
"But my dad was different, he was totally driven and wanted to get out and see the world – he was a bit tempestuous. He wanted to go to university and so enrolled in the priesthood and got an education but left just before he took his vows."
In the years after the Second World War, he became a carabinieri, or police officer, and while garrisoned in Salerno met wife-to-be Nunzia and they wed in 1954.
Salvatore's search for work was frenetic. He became an oil prospector in Venezuela and an ice cream wholesaler, before moving to the UK in the hope of finding work, which he did, taking up the position of cook in a private residence.
Shortly afterwards, he opened his first coffee bar, The Unicorn, Stanningley. There followed a move back to Italy, where Salvatore and Nunzia opened two restaurants between 1972 and 1974.
John, who has a son, Leon, 10, recalled the period: "I was 12-years-old when we moved back to Italy and I remember it being a little disruptive, I spoke the language but not to the level where I could enter mainstream school, so I had private tuition for a year. It was alright for Gip, because he was older, he'd been through school.
"When we eventually moved back to England and Salvo's opened, I was 16.
Dad was doing pizzas and Gip was working full time in the kitchen and mum was doing everything from making tablecloths to helping with the cooking and washing tea towels.”
Salvo’s was part of a new wave of restaurants which arrived in the 1970s, bringing a style of cuisine and culture which was very much alien to Yorkshire-folk, many of whom were just as parochial as those from Salvatore’s home village.
Salvatore and Nunzia opened several coffee bars, among them the Blue Gardenia (where the Room restaurant now stands) Gino’s on Kirkstall Road, all of which were bolstered by the emerging youth culture. The coffee bars tended to be hang-outs for Mods, who would smoke cigarettes and play pinball.
There were also several other restaurants, including Salvo’s on the Park (now The Roundhay Fox), which ran from 1978-80, Coconut Grove at the bottom end of Merrion Street, which opened in mid-1980s and had a jazz club upstairs and a nightclub downstairs, which later became The Gallery and is now Rio’s.
In their younger days, John and Gip were as much into promoting club nights as they were running restaurants.
They were responsible for bringing a number of cutting edge musical acts to Leeds. They ran club nights at The Underground, beneath the former Town & Country Club (now the O2 Academy) and brought in top name jazz acts such as Ronnie Scott, George Melly and Georgie Fame. They also worked with DJ acts, Nightmares on Wax and Giles Peterson.
John and Gip’s days of clubbing are, they freely admit, behind them.
John said: “Getting in from a nightclub at 4am doesn’t sit well when you have a family and are likely to be woken up at 6am by a seven-year-old. We just stopped running around.”
The rest of the Salvo’s ventures, which also included three home delivery pizza shops (two in Leeds, one in Harrogate), were sold on.
The restaurant and bistro in Headingley remain.
More recently, Salvo’s won Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word best Italian restaurant of the year award, beating more than 50 other entrants.
Father-of-two Gip, who resumed his role in the kitchen for the show, said: “I can remember feeling a little nervous when Gordon Ramsay first turned up at the restaurant and I cooked him something to eat. He’s a really nice man and was very kind to us but there is a theatrical side to him, which you see on the TV. We were overjoyed to win the trophy.”
But it seems Salvo’s is still on the up. John and Gip recently bought an adjacent shop unit, which they hope to convert to create a larger Salvo’s restaurant.
Gip said: “We have always been a little short of space but we make no apologies for what it is. When we first opened, I remember we couldn’t offer single tables and one night we seated two separate diners together. Nine months later, they came back, they’d just got married.
“When you go out to eat, it’s not for the food. You can get food at home.
People go out for the experience, the atmosphere, the company and that’s what we give them. Top quality food should be a given. When people come here, we want them to feel relaxed from the moment they walk in.”
John added: “This extension will be our crowning glory, it’s what we always imagined Salvo’s to be. If the planning permission goes ahead as we hope it will, there will be much more room. We’ve never operated a booking policy here and it’s often the case we have people lining up to get in and as much as we like that, we’d also like to be able to accommodate them.
“What we are also keen to do, in our 35th year, is to produce a commemorative book, featuring stories and pictures from Salvo’s. We would love to hear from people who remember any of the restaurants of coffee bars and they will be named in the book and get a free copy.”
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