"We're one of the only ones left really. There aren't many of us left in Newport." Owen Emmanuel is chatting with me by the unusually large bar of Vittorio's, one of the many features of the charming family restaurant's interior which has remained unchanged since it first opened 34 years ago.
Of course there have been a few tweaks at Vittorio's over the years. There's the prized pizza oven, which was installed by Owen and his wife Rebecca during the coronavirus pandemic, and some spruced-up branding. Some of its signature dishes have been modernised a little, but Vittorio's has otherwise retained much of the traditional charm that keeps customers old and new walking through the doors decades later.
"We've done quite a lot to it, but only in the last three years," Owen, 39, told us. "We abused the fact that we had to shut [during the pandemic] and took advantage. The bar is at it was. This is how I remember it but just slightly different, new chairs and tables. We tried as best we can to modernise it without losing what is a really traditional Italian restaurant. You wouldn't get any other restaurant with a bar as big as this - you'd have ten tables in, you wouldn't have a chandelier in like we do! I love it, I wouldn't change it."
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Vittorio's was opened in 1989 by Vittorio Rizza, who ran the restaurant with his daughter Anna Redman for many years and became a well-known face. Vittorio had several restaurants in Newport at the time, including another restaurant in Pill and a fish and chip shop on Corporation Road. He had moved over from his native Cassino, southern Italy and met his wife Laura, who is Italian but was living in Newport.
At the time, the restaurant was part of a long list of family-owned eateries in Newport. Today, it is one of a dying breed in an industry awash with chains. Now on its third generation of family involvement, customers are still greeted by many of the same faces they've grown to love over the years. 83-year-old Guido, another relative, still works behind the bar at weekends. Vittorio's wife Laura, now also in her 80s, sometimes drops in to play the accordion for guests. On the day we visit, a couple of hours before evening service starts, we spot countless accordions on the walls and shelves, including one from the war gifted by a customer. There are other frequent nods to Vittorio's legacy; pictures of Vittorio himself in ornate frames hang on the walls, as well as photos of the picturesque-looking Cassino. There are also numerous football pictures on the wall, a great love of the former owner.
Three decades on, the restaurant remains in the family's hands; current owner Owen's wife Rebecca is the daughter of Leandra Rizza , Vittorio's other daughter. They met back in 2005 and used to come to Vittorio's on dates. Owen is a passionate chef who has worked in kitchens from his mid-teens to early twenties before opting to pursue music as the drummer of folk-rock band Rusty Shackle, something he later had to give up due to the amount of time he needed to be in Vittorio's.
"I started getting back into cooking in 2015, 2016 and ended up working here full-time in the kitchen in about 2016 or 2017," he explained, adding that he worked in Vittorio's kitchen for years before the opportunity came up to take over the business when Anna retired in 2019. The restaurant is close to Owen's heart in many ways, and taking it over with Rebecca involved was a perfect way to keep the restaurant in the family.
Vittorio died in 2011 aged 75 while in his home town of Cassino, and a memorial mass was held in Stow Hill in Newport - testament to the popular figure he was. "He was a big character," Owen recalled. "Everyone knew who he was. Towards the end of his life, he spent more time back in Italy than here, where he still had friends and family.
"I worked with Vittorio behind the bar [after he finished]. He used to come up and help out on the odd occasion when we were short staffed. Rebecca worked here - most of the family still do. Everyone knows Guido when they walk through the door. His wife Maria also works on weekends, everyone knows her. Anna still works here even though she retired."
"He was obsessed with football," Owen remembered of Vittorio. "One of the first things he said to me is 'to be able to talk to an Italian, you need to be able to talk about football, politics and food. If you can talk about those three things you're fine'. When Italy won the World Cup one year, he was home in Italy and had said he'd shave his head if they won. We've got a picture of him holding a football with a bald head."
Despite the rainy afternoon, the cosiness of Vittorio's interior makes you feel you could almost be in Italy, sitting down to a good strong coffee. Other modern flourishes include the wood-fire pizza oven and some minor changes to dishes while keeping the well-loved Vittorio's tradition. For its 30th birthday in 2019, Vittorio's had an invite-only night where guests were treated to a special menu of dishes at the prices they were back in 1989.
"We had Vittorio's handwritten notes of what the menu was going to be and the prices. We've had customers coming since the first week [in 1989]," Owen said. "Pate with toast was £1.90, pizzas at £3.50, lasagne £4.90. Sirloin steak £7.90. It was Anna's idea and we had that event just before we took over. It was a brilliant night with all our regulars and our original menu."
Like many businesses, the pandemic hit Owen and the business hard. They hadn't long taken over when the UK lockdown, three years ago to the day on the afternoon we chat, forced businesses to close indefinitely. It kickstarted a long period of uncertainty which Owen used positively to make some much-desired tweaks to the restaurant.
"We had our first Christmas, we were saving up for the pizza oven we've now got. We were desperate to put it in as we knew it would be a big selling point. We did things like the bounce-back loan and rebranded the restaurant, logos, redesigned the front.
"With the reopening afterwards, I was worried people might have stayed in or got used to takeaways. But thankfully they haven't, and they've carried on coming back out, which is great."
Some changes have remained since the pandemic. The restaurant has cut out lunch service and now only opens in the evenings, something Owen, who has two young children, said has helped. "We used to do split shifts but after lockdown we did bring the hours in. We used to do lunch but the parking around here is atrocious, so we were only busy in the evenings.
"We close on Sundays. The big ones that people open - Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Mother's Day - we don't open those, or bank holidays. We try and keep it as balanced as possible.
"Eating out hasn't changed. We're so busy - Fridays and Saturdays are obviously the busiest. If anything, it's gotten busier since Covid."
After the challenges of the pandemic, the hospitality industry has faced further blows with rising costs of ingredients and energy bills putting major pressure on businesses. Last year WalesOnline spoke to businesses in south Wales about how rising costs were impacting the industry.
"Prices have just gotten uncontrollable," Owen said. "We are looking at prices and thinking we might have to put them up. We've got the increase in national living wage to coincide with everything else. We've resisted [putting prices up] a lot, but at some point we'll have to do it.
"No restaurant owner wants to put prices up. You don't want to risk people not coming back, and you'll see on our pricing we've always tried to keep it fair, so it's somewhere that instead of going once every six months, you go a bit more.
"So putting them up is not what you want to do. Our gas and electric now is around £2,500 a month. It's eyewatering, over double what it was. You've just got to find that on top of everything else, and the fact food prices are going up. I try not to moan about it too much, because you can't control it. But it's a battle at the moment."
Owen said he feels the warm, family welcome and food quality bring people back year after year. "We don't buy anything in, we make everything from bread to sauces here. I think that's what disappearing from the market. Our food is consistent. We're not trying to be a Michelin star or anything but our food is fresh and cooked in-house. And the service is great.
"With Maria, Guido, Anna, Rebecca and me, it's a quarter of the workforce - they get to see the fact it's a family-owned restaurant. The atmosphere on a Friday and Saturday night is still great."
A self-described "obsessive" over food, Owen often travels to Italy for inspiration on his dishes and is in the restaurant almost every day of the week. He added that he hopes the family tradition of Vittorio's can continue in the years to come. "Rebecca and I will keep it going for as long as we can, and then hopefully I can convince my son or daughter to do the same!
"In a way it's easier for me to tell Vittorio's' story, because you're telling someone else's. When it's your story, it's hard to sell. I knew I could promote the business with his name and the fact we are still a family business.
"In Newport there was Chez Giovanni, Villa Dino, Fratelli - they've all gone by the wayside now, probably for that reason, nobody taking over. We need more independents in Newport. The more of us there are, the better."
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