Welcome to Graces! This restaurant is dedicated to my late grandmother, Grace Mandola. My grandmother was a strong, amazing woman who worked well into her nineties. She was also a lady who lived for her family. Grace was the best cook that I have ever known, and I have been fortunate enough to have met a lot of great chefs, but my grandmother was magical in the kitchen. Her Sunday lunches were over the top. She would bake bread on Saturdays and start her tomato sauce, "Suga," in the wee hours of the morning. This sauce would have tons of braised meats, meatballs, and just the right amount of basil. She would also have baked eggplant, stuffed artichokes, a good green salad, and to top it all off, she always had a pork roast or fried chicken. After describing the Sunday meal, you can see that she was 100% Sicilian, but when you add the roast and the fried chicken, you can also see that she was proud to be an American. Not only was she great with Italian food, she was also very good with American food. And guess what? She was raised by Sicilian immigrants that happened to settle in Louisiana. the best of three worlds, Italian, American, and Louisiana. Ha! If it wasnt for Grace, we Houstonians would have never had the opportunity to have eaten at restaurants like Ninos, Vincents, Tony Mandolas, Damians, or Carrabbas. My grandmother taught all of her family about good food, but more importantly, she instilled hospitality and something even more than that, she taught us to cook from the heart. Cooking from the heart is always the most important ingredient.
Graces
