Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
People
Crowds clamor for the food at Della's Delectables - and for the jovial, fast-moving, indefatigable host.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 28, 2003
BRANDON -- Beverly DellaGrotta didn't learn to cook until she was 19, pregnant with the son who would one day become a chef.
Fifteen years later, she started Della's Delectables.
It was a whim of sorts, "a hobby" to break the boredom of being a food sales representative who spent more time in a car than in front of a stove.
But within three months, DellaGrotta's two daily soups and eight sandwiches were turning an unexpected profit.
Today, her "hobby" is a local landmark, serving as many as 300 lunches a day. Businessmen in stiff ties sneak in for the baked potato soup. Pregnant women come for the chicken salad sandwiches that go down when nothing else will.
But for many Della's customers, the food -- served on paper plates and in foam bowls -- is secondary.
They come for a dose of Beverly, who rises each morning before dawn to make her signature soups -- but is never too tired or busy to greet customers like the longtime friends they've become.
"I know all their names," DellaGrotta says.
Alex DellaGrotta, 29, likens his mother to a bartender: "A lot of people just come to talk to her. They know she'll always listen."
She answers the phone for pickup orders, recognizes the hungry voice on the other end, and dives into an easy banter peppered with giggles and exclamations that shave decades off her 48 years:
"No! He said that? Really! Oh, my gosh!"
A man comes to the counter just before the noon rush, and DellaGrotta picks up where last week's conversation left off.
"I swear, I've seen some people go through six kids and six divorces!" she says during a brief lull.
"We see people lose their spouses, and it's so sad. But good things happen, too. I see babies born and watch them grow up."
A few minutes later, a woman with a bulging belly walks up to the register and orders -- what else? -- the chicken salad sandwich.
"I don't know how she does it, but she knows everybody, and she knows what they want," says Brandon resident Pat Ellington, who comes in a few minutes later for her weekly treat: chicken salad on pumpernickel with provolone and all the fixings.
Ellington and DellaGrotta chat about everything from head colds to the previous night's episode of American Idol.
"I am so glad Clay won," Ellington says.
"I know!" DellaGrotta agrees. "But that girl Simon picked just wasn't very good."
The eldest of five siblings, DellaGrotta has always been outgoing, fast-moving and energetic.
Her mother, Becky Woodruff, says: "Me, if I've got a lot to do, I shut everything else out. Not Beverly. She gets stressed out, but you'd never know it. She can always stop and listen."
Born Beverly Bradford, she was raised in Cleveland. When she was 17, the family moved to Tampa.
She got a job at an Italian restaurant on Kennedy Boulevard and fell in love with the owner's son, Anthony DellaGrotta. They married, and she soon became pregnant with Alex, named for grandfather Alexander DellaGrotta.
The elder Alexander DellaGrotta, increasingly ill with emphysema, spent DellaGrotta's pregnancy tutoring her in the kitchen. He passed on to his Irish-Scottish-English daughter-in-law the Italian secrets that she still uses each morning when she makes her soups.
In February 1989, on borrowed money, she opened Della's off Oakfield Drive in Brandon. Within three months, she had made enough to pay off the loan.
"You know, after 14 years, I don't even know how much I make. Because I don't care. I know I'm doing well, and we make enough to pay the bills. If your heart's in it, versus your pocketbook, it works."
DellaGrotta pulls her cool gray Porsche up to Della's each morning by 6:30, and works nonstop until 3:30 p.m. Her French-manicured hands, dressed in several rings, betray the times she has nicked herself chopping vegetables.
Her blond hair doesn't stray, even as she flits from task to task. She wears a path from the cash register to the sink, where she washes lettuce and dries it in a big, traffic cone-orange salad spinner that she can barely fit her arms around.
Then it's over to the baking counter, where she cuts a slice of Hawaiian wedding cake.
Then back to the register, and over to the phone. For nine hours. Six days a week. For the past 14 years.
This isn't easy work, but DellaGrotta says she keeps doing it because she loves her customers. And she loathes the chain restaurants that have pummeled countless independent Mom-and-Pop operations like hers.
"My family, we will not eat at a chain restaurant. We just refuse," she says. "That's why I work so hard -- to be that one independent place where people can always come for good food."
That mission led to Della's After Dark, the evening bistro son Alex has run since October 2001. Amid soft lights and strains of jazz, he serves a menu that includes his mother's meatloaf and his wife's New Zealand desserts.
On some Friday nights, DellaGrotta and her husband drop by for a meal -- a chance to be waited on.
Then Saturday rolls around and it's back to the lunch crowd. Back to the faces they have come to know so well.