There is a photograph on the wall at Pelato's new Franklin location that stops Theresa Scotto in her tracks every time she sees it. It's her father, standing in the backyard, long white tube socks pulled up, holding a platter of food. "It was always about food," she says. "It was always about bringing family together every Sunday outside."
That image, and the dozens of others like it covering the picture wall that Scotto makes sure exists in every Pelato location, tells you everything you need to know about what this restaurant is and where it comes from. It is a family's memory, plated and served to the masses, one dish at a time.
Theresa Scotto spent years in the corporate world, selling insurance for large groups, while her husband, Anthony, a veteran of the New York City restaurant scene, built a career that included two Manhattan restaurants, hospitality for the New York Yankees, and kiosks at the Brooklyn Nets stadium. She watched from the sidelines, absorbing the business without necessarily planning to join it.
Then their daughter Gabriella enrolled at Belmont University in Nashville to pursue songwriting, and the family began making regular trips south. They noticed something. "There wasn't a lot of Italian food," Scotto says, with the clarity of someone who knows exactly what a good Italian meal should taste like.
The family subsequently opened Luogo, their upscale Italian concept, in Nashville's Gulch neighborhood, launching it, improbably, from New York City in the aftermath of COVID. Then their son Anthony was called back to his real estate finance job at BlackRock in New York, but he chose Nashville instead. And for the first time in years, both of Theresa's children were in the same city. She didn't hesitate."Me being the mom that I am, I followed them and told my husband we were leaving New York and headed to Nashville," she says.
With Luogo established and the family firmly rooted in Tennessee, Anthony found an off-market space in Germantown. He turned to his mother with a question she'd been waiting her whole life to hear. "He said to me, 'What do you think about opening up that restaurant that you always had an idea about, which was Pelato and opening up a restaurant with the food that we grew up eating?'" Scotto says. "The stuff that my mom made us, what I make my kids and what my grandparents made for my parents."
Pelato — the name itself a nod to the family's Neapolitan and Tuscan roots — was born. The menu is built around the kind of cooking that doesn't appear in most Italian-American restaurants: humble, scratch-made dishes passed down through generations. The panelle, fried chickpea cakes served with ricotta and parmesan, is one of Scotto's favorite dishes. The potato croquettes, another favorite, trace directly back to Scotto's mother, who made them from leftover mashed potatoes because, as she explains, "They had no money growing up." Her grandmother would fold in mozzarella, add parsley, roll them by hand, and fry them two at a time in an enamel pot she has used for sixty years.
"So, that's really where the stuff comes from," Scotto says. "It comes from really not having a lot of money, making things from scratch, making items from leftovers."
Pelato has since expanded to Charleston, and two weeks ago, the Franklin location opened in the former Party Fowl space at CoolSprings Galleria. The response has been immediate and, by Scotto's own admission, a little overwhelming.
"We're shocked, but happily shocked at the amount of people that are coming," she says. "And it's been twofold. It's, wow, we love Germantown, but this is so much closer. And then a whole other group of people that didn't even know we existed in Germantown."
She admits she was initially nervous about the two Nashville-area locations competing with each other. But the longer she has lived here, the more she has come to understand the geography of Middle Tennessee life. "I realized that there was so many people out here that, one, didn't even know that Luogo and Pelato existed closer to the city. And two, that they really just don't like coming towards that way. And I get it. We lived on the Upper East Side, and when I used to have to go to the West Side, I'd be like, 'Oh. I get it.' It's the same thing here."
The format, small plates designed for sharing, with two to three plates recommended per person, took some getting used to in Germantown at first. But Scotto has watched it click for guests over time. "Now, everybody gets it. They come in and they're like, 'You know what? I want to try that. I want to taste this. I want to try that.' And then the next time they come back and they try a whole different bunch of set of recipes, so it's terrific."
Everything is made in-house. The gluten-free pasta. The regular pasta. The cannoli chips. The tiramisu. The budino. The gelatos and sorbets. The only exception is the bread. "It's a labor of love," she says. "It's a lot of work, but it's really fulfilling."
No account of Pelato is complete without mentioning Scotto's mother, who still comes into the restaurant once a week to taste the potato croquettes and make sure they are exactly right. She was there when the chef learned to make them, demonstrating the process herself, insisting on the standard she has held for decades. She tours the dining room at brunch, stops at tables, and gestures toward the picture wall. "Do you see me on the wall?" she asks strangers, pointing to a photograph of herself at seventeen.
"She's 90 years old and she's a spitfire," Scotto says. "I love that she's still such a part of this."
Scotto's official title at Pelato shifts depending on the day and the dynamics of working alongside her son. "Sometimes I'll say, 'What's mommy's title?' And it'll be, I'm president one day. The day that we're not arguing about something, it's CEO. The next day, it could be vice president. I've been demoted," she laughs. She has also had to get used to Anthony calling her Theresa at work instead of Mom.
With four restaurants opened in three and a half years, the pace has been relentless. But Scotto has discovered something about herself in the process. "The part that I love the most right now is opening new locations, staffing them and getting them up and running and seeing them come to fruition," she says. Two more Pelato locations are expected to open in the southeast within the next year, though she keeps the specific markets close to the vest for now.
"I think with Pelato, the biggest thing that we want people to take away is that they feel like they're eating what we ate growing up, loving the food, obviously, but being able to taste different things," she says. "And I think that's what hospitality is all about."
PelatoRestaurant.com