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Still serving up good times

His restaurant days are behind him, but Francesco Marchesini is quick to open his home to old friends to share good food and memories.

By JOSH ZIMMER
Published March 18, 2005

CARROLLWOOD - In a spacious room overlooking Lake Magdalene, admiring eyes are on the lively, slightly balding man behind the cooking island.

Dressed in a white, button-down chef's top for the occasion, he oversees a busy stove top of boiling water and steaming tomato sauce. Talking in gravelly, heavily accented English, he serves fresh Italian food with equal helpings of nostalgia and good humor.

It's the winning personality that made Francesco Marchesini, a small town boy from northern Italy, one of Hillsborough County's best-known restaurateurs.

For 16 years he ran Ristorante Francesco, a jewel in an unglamorous storefront off Fletcher Avenue. Location didn't matter. While customers remember the food as tasty, they say the restaurant thrived for one reason: his charisma.

Francesco shut down in February, a year and a half after Marchesini sold the business to a group that included his longtime cook. Although he never looked back, the closing piled more sadness on a fabled restaurant scene that lost another Italian institution earlier this year - Malio's in South Tampa.

These days, Marchesini still entertains. But he does so at his Carrollwood home, in an open room that combines a kitchen, dining room and living room. On this night, he is hosting a private dinner for Rebecca Bast, a friend whose wedding reception he catered at his house several months ago. When she asked if he would cook for her bunco group, the only question was when.

Lifted by scents of bacon and garlic, the women sip red and white wine while savoring pieces of hot bruschetta whipped up on the spot. When Gracia Akers finally arrives, Marchesini shows off the style that earned him regular customers.

"Glad you found the place," he says. "Give me a kiss."

He asks if the fresh mozzarella balls, which he fashioned by hand from curd, salt and boiling water, are hot (they are). He wants to know if the women are comfortable (they beam and take notes).

The dirty jokes come later.

For years, the steady flow of diners to Francesco included former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and many Tampa Bay Buccaneers. World-famous athletes and entertainers discovered it as well. The proof is on Marchesini's walls: autographed photos and drawings that once hung at the restaurant but now grace his house.

Customers say it wasn't the same after Marchesini, now 67, retired. He wanted to enjoy the sunsets instead of driving to work. They still wanted to hear "Frankie" sing.

"It doesn't mean that the food wasn't good," said Vivian Reeves, owner of Reeves Import Motors on Florida Avenue. "It just wasn't the same. There was no music."

For many years, it was one of the rare fine-dining opportunities in north Hillsborough County. Saddlebrook Resort sports director Kevin O'Connor would often drive down from Wesley Chapel with one of Marchesini's biggest fans, tennis legend Pete Sampras. Ex-Buccaneer Trent Dilfer occasionally joined them.

"You didn't think it would be there," O'Connor said, fondly recalling Marchesini's desserts - usually unsolicited and delivered free of charge.

Outside, crime and poverty made the area a place to avoid. Inside, Marchesini placed flowers on the tables, touched flesh and opened doors. Women got kissed on the cheek. He made people laugh.

Music played constantly, with Marchesini often breaking into song. He'll never forget a harmonica duet with baseball Hall-of-Famer Stan Musial. Musial later signed one of the posters in his house.

"He made the rounds," said Greco. "He'd go to the door and if you hadn't been there a day he made you feel he hadn't seen you for six years. It was just a pleasure to be there."

Marchesini says had he known how successful the restaurant would be, he would have jumped into the business much earlier.

For all of his stature, Marchesini remains down-to-earth. Powerful friends, a golf membership at Avila and free private plane trips to Las Vegas and major sporting events haven't changed the small town boy who grew up poor.

His life changed when he met his wife, Valerie, in Florence in 1959. They wrote, visited and married three years later in her hometown, Chicago. The couple moved to the United States, where Marchesini found work as a baggage handler for Eastern Airlines at Tampa International Airport.

Union troubles in the 1980s were another turning point. Fed up with his work environment, he decided to take a gamble on a lifelong dream and open his own Italian restaurant.

"I thought he was crazy," his wife said.

He played cook and manager. Relatives helped out, lightening the load. His mother made fresh pasta every day.

Still, things didn't work out immediately.

"I was ready to close," Marchesini said.

But some of the right people found the restaurant. Vivian Reeves remembers telling Marchesini to stick it out when he couldn't fill more than three tables some nights. Her late husband, Allen, began recommending the out-of-the-way place to fellow club members at Avila.

When things looked particularly bleak, good friends gave him money to pay the bills. And customers started arriving, first in a trickle and then a flood.

Ristorante Francesco was on its way.

"The location was actually terrible," Marchesini said. But "I was the only place in North Tampa you could bring somebody for business."

The restaurant became a destination, just like Malio's, Donatello and Lauro's in South Tampa. For senior golfers participating in the Verizon Classic at the Tournament Players Club in Lutz, it was a required stop.

The lively atmosphere softened the rigors of the road, said golfing great Gary Player. The winner of nine regular tour majors said he once had Marchesini call his son-in-law, a restaurateur in South Africa, to "give him a few (cooking) tips."

They also ate at Marchesini's house, a private favor that over the years became an important fundraising technique for local charities.

"This man makes you feel at home away from home," Player said.

At its peak in the 1990s, the restaurant grossed thousands of dollars a night. Marchesini could turn the tables around three times an evening.

Customers became friends. He still can't get over his good fortune. One loyal diner arranged for him to play the ultra-exclusive Augusta National Golf Club, site of the major tournament. Another gave him tickets to the World Cup in California. For Marchesini, a soccer aficionado who played on local teams well into his 40s, it was a dream come true.

Maybe he does understand the attraction, but is too modest to admit it.

"I always been myself," he said. "I really learned when you give, you have so much back."

The only star to leave a bad taste was Luciano Pavarotti. The opera great sat down to dinner one evening, only to leave his guests after about five minutes. That broke Marchesini's cardinal rule: be nice to people.

The feeling extends to local charities.

"He has been influential in helping us raise close to a quarter of a million," said Rhoda Zusman, founder of Project Return, a program for the mentally ill off Waters and Florida avenues. "He does it for other community-based organizations. Everybody loves him. I used to kid him, if he ran for mayor he probably would win."

They met more than 20 years ago, shortly after Zusman and her family moved to Tampa from California. One evening, Marchesini returned their sailboat, which had blown away and gotten caught in the weeds by his house. They began talking. Marchesini, still working at Eastern Airlines, agreed to help out.

Now, the annual golf tournament Marchesini later started with Allen Reeves brings in about $40,000, she said. Former Mayor Greco joked that like a good Italian, Marchesini always brings a lot of homemade food to the golf course.

"He doesn't know how to say no," Zusman said. "I love Frankie."

As generous as he was with customers - in spirit and in food - Marchesini could apply a little quid pro quo when necessary. Sampras, notoriously private, ended up participating in events that Marchesini supported. Sampras also donated autographed items for charity fundraisers, said O'Connor, the Saddlebrook sports director.

Marchesini "leaned on Pete a lot," O'Connor said.

Rebecca Bast, who requested Marchesini's recent private dinner, said she met him through a mutual friend several years ago. Soon after, they played in the Project Return golf tournament "and we've been best buds ever since."

Jay Laneer, Marchesini's chef and one of the people who bought the restaurant, would not talk for this story. Marchesini sold the business for a pittance: about $75,000, he estimated. Of that, $52,000 went to pay off taxes and a loan.

Though he showed up sometimes and steered customers their way, the new owners struggled without his spiritedness.

"I used to go strictly to see Frankie," said Temple Terrace resident and Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, who stopped coming.

Jokes (most of which can't be repeated in full) were main dishes at Francesco's.

"To me a joke is a joke," Marchesini said. "If you get offended, it's your fault."

Bast's bunco group doesn't seem to mind when he tells one about the pope, or the speeding driver who kids a police officer about having a gun, a dead body and a pound of marijuana in his car. Even the condom and dumb wife quips draw laughter.

The women feel so good now, he probably could say anything.

Greco, who likes the joke about the woman and the milk bath, said the restaurant was a tie to a different age when people had more time for one another. It was an attitude reflected in the area's restaurants.

"I'm old enough to remember. There was lots of restaurants like that," Greco said. Now, "You go to the restaurants, you don't know anyone. The food is good. That's it."

The one person who seems least bothered by the final curtain is Marchesini. He has enough money to play golf at Avila, host parties and take two-month vacations to see his family in Italy. The former baggage handler describes two kinds of bank accounts: one for money and the other for memories.

Marchesini revels more in the latter.

He feels sorry for his former chef and the group that bought Ristorante Francesco. But, he said, "I don't feel bad about the restaurant."

The women thank Marchesini profusely. On the way out, Judy Wilson gives him a kiss.

Josh Zimmer covers Temple Terrace and the University of South Florida area. He can be reached at 269-5314 or zimmer@sptimes

[Last modified March 17, 2005, 08:40:12]