When a nightclub singer from Michigan visited Alabama in 1975, he had no idea he’d soon open a restaurant that would still be winning national-level recognition 50 years later.
But here we are: Gambino’s Italian Grille in Fairhope, opened by Rick Gambino in May 1976, has carved out a unique place for itself. It’s one of the oldest restaurants in a city known for its food scene, but it’s fresh enough to be rated No. 7 in TripAdvisor.com’s 2024 ranking of the “best of the best” casual dining restaurants in the United States.
The ranking, based on positive reviews from TripAdvisor users, is no one-time thing. In the site’s 2021 Traveler’s Choice awards, Gambino’s ranked No. 13 in the nation in the “Everyday Eats” category, a field for venues serving “great food that won’t break the bank.” In 2023 it moved up to sixth place in the category, which seems since then to have been replaced by the more general “casual dining” classification.
Gambino’s Italian Grill has been a mainstay of the active Fairhope dining scene since 1976.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
“It’s easy to understand why Gambino’s Italian Grill is a local favorite,” said the site’s summary. “Here, you’ll find excellent service, a lively atmosphere, and an extensive menu.”
All true.
On a recent Sunday afternoon visit, my companion and I found a sprawling place that offers a range of seating options: A classic dark, quiet interior, an open-air patio and courtyard with a bandstand, and the Wise Guys Lounge.
The service was attentive and informed: Our waitress could tell us what went into the daily special, made nuanced recommendations based on details of the various dishes and easily fielded rooked questions such as what makes “Rocco Sauce” different from Alfredo. Our spot on the patio offered a view of sunlight greenery and water features to one side, and a band setting up for later to the other.
And the menu? It’s big enough to rival those at some of the Greek restaurants of a bygone era in Mobile. We were presented with four pages of possibilities. One of them would be sufficient to operate a credible steakhouse, another could have represented a full-service seafood joint with fried and broiled platters, a cornucopia of seafood-and-pasta dishes and specialties such as triggerfish and a crab claw dinner. A third page added a lineup of oven-baked Italian entrees, such as lasagna and eggplant parmigiana, plus chicken dishes. The fourth was filled with more pasta dishes and a handful of veal-based main courses.
Crab-Stuffed Bacon-Wrapped Grilled Jalapenos are among the appetizers at Gambino’s Italian Grill in Fairhope.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
That’s without appetizers, soups, salads and desserts. And you might as well order an appetizer, because it’s probably going to take a minute to narrow down your entrée selection.
We went with the Crab-Stuffed Bacon-Wrapped Grilled Jalapenos ($16.99) because that’s just not something you see every day. Neither are Steamed Mussels or Eggplant Fries, but the poppers left us with no regrets: Packed with crabmeat, they were substantial enough to be a meal in themselves.
Meanwhile, Gambino’s provides fresh-baked bread sticks and a house salad, served family-style, with all entrees, so the table was filling up even before we ordered.
My companion chose the Gambino’s Taste of Italy ($26.99) a combination platter featuring “oven-baked chicken parmesan, homemade lasagna, chicken/veal blended cannelloni with Alfredo and rich, creamy Penne Alfredo.” I opted for the Seafood Palermo ($27.99 with Marinara, as ordered, or you can have it with Alfredo for $29.99).
The Gambino’s Taste of Italy features chicken parmesan, lasagna, chicken/veal blended cannelloni with Alfredo and Penne AlfredoLawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
While very different, our entrees had one thing in common: Either would have fed a family of four, even if that family hadn’t already taken the edge off with salad and bread sticks. The Taste of Italy was exactly what you’d have hoped, a sampler of rich, hearty Italian classics. The only downside was the difficulty of choosing what to take a bite of next, knowing that you were only good for a few more bites.
The Seafood Palermo was something more distinctive, with shrimp, oysters, scallops, mussels and littleneck clams tossed in imported linguini. It would be easy for this to go wrong, with a bath of heavy marinara drowning out everything else. It was indeed an extremely hearty dish, but also had the balance to let the varied seafood flavors shine through.
Each of us left with enough food for at least a couple more meals, a phenomenon that seems to be pretty common at Gambino’s.
The Seafood Palermo at Gambino’s Italian Grill in Fairhope includes shrimp, oysters, scallops, mussels and littleneck clams and imported linguini. It can be had with marinara or Alfredo sauce.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
Now, it’s easy to make Italian food rich and hearty, and it’s easy to pile a lot of pasta on the plate and call that value. But if that’s all there was to Gambino’s, it never would have earned its place as one of Fairhope’s oldest and most praised restaurants.
It seems to come down to Rick Gambino’s willingness to give customers more, even when they didn’t necessarily ask for it – not just more volume, but more ingredients, more quality, more attention to detail. His attitude explains some of Gambino’s quirks, such as being open only for dinner when it surely could draw a big lunch crowd as well.
He first saw Fairhope when he helped his second-generation Italian-American father move there. “I liked it, was tired of the snow up in Michigan where I was born and lived,” he said. “And so I came down to help him and then I went back and decided to come back for good.”
He found a regular gig at a restaurant bar but began thinking he might like to open a pizzeria. He found some investors and took over the restaurant. He and his wife, the late Gari Gambino, were suddenly in the business.
Memorabilia on the walls of Gambino’s Italian Grill includes photos of founder Rick Gambino before he became a restaurateur.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
“I was just running back and forth trying to keep customers happy, learning the business on the fly,” he said. “I just decided to open it up, and I thought, well, I gotta have steaks. I don’t think everybody likes Italian, so I put steaks on and seafood. I had a five-page menu like you saw today. And, you know, I did enough things right to offset the things I was doing wrong. That’s pretty much it.”
Don’t fall for the modesty. Gambino made choices not everyone makes, and followed through on them.
“I said, if you take care of the customers and operate this restaurant from the customer’s chair, you should be okay,” he said. “You know, there’s so many people [who say] ‘I’m gonna get a restaurant because my grandmother had the best gumbo I ever tasted, and it’ll pack the place.’ Well, that doesn’t always work, you know. So I just thought, make sure they get a lot of food and that’s the reason the menu is so big. I said, not everybody’s gonna like Italian. So I put in a full line of steaks, prime rib and fresh seafood and seafood and pasta combinations and seafood by itself, and it was a big menu.
“But I thought, you know, that doesn’t exclude so many people. I put the strain on us and not the customers … Basically that’s why it’s kinda worked for us, I think.”
He’s invented a few things along the way. Rocco sauce is named for his dad, Rocco Gambino, and he describes it as “kind of like a glorified alfredo sauce,” that goes beyond alfredo’s tendency to be blandly creamy. The house dressing proved so popular that Gambino’s Original Gourmet Italian is now distributed to Piggly Wiggly and other retailers.
The cannoli at Gambino’s Italian Grill: Highly recommended.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
He’s proud of the fact that the dressing includes honey and parmesan rather than a simple base of sugar, oil and vinegar. He’s proud of the fact that the bottomless house salad is thick with olives, garbanzo beans, pepperoncini, tomatoes, carrots and more. He’s proud that his meat sauce isn’t simply made with ground beef but includes Italian sausage and meat from slow-cooked ribs. He’s proud that the excellent cannoli are assembled with a homemade filling in imported shells.
If all that sounds like a lot of work, it is. That’s why the restaurant isn’t open for lunch. That’s prep time.
He sold the business a couple of times over the years but ended up taking it back over. His five sons all worked there over the years, and some of them opened other well-known restaurants.
He could write a book. In fact, he has: It’s an autobiography titled “Rick Gambino: Never Give Up.”
Fittingly, after 49 years in operation, he’s not talking about giving up. In fact, he’s talking about getting on with some reservations, sprucing the place up. But the focus will always be on the food. Gambino is not afraid to tinker with bestsellers, if he thinks he can make a good thing better.
“We don’t cut corners,” Gambino said. “I’ve actually added things to something that’s doing fine … I feel good if I’m giving them quality. I try to create the wow factor. If you put the plate down and they say ‘Wow,’ then I think we’ve made it. Part way, anyway.”
Gambino’s Italian Grill is at 18 Laurel Ave. in Fairhope. For menu and other information, visit www.gambinositaliangrill.com. For updates on the entertainment lineup, see www.facebook.com/gambinositaliangrill.