Melissa Meyer was born into the restaurant business.
“I’ve been running restaurants since I was in diapers one way or the other,” chuckled Meyer, whose parents owned several restaurants in New York and Arizona.
“I always had a passion for it,” she said.
He also has a passion for honoring her late father, legendary restauranter and chef Tomaso Maggiore.
“My father had Tomaso’s at 32nd Street and Camelback for over 48 years, among other restaurants. So I grew up in the business.
“I grew up watching the hard work and the satisfaction of being able to teach people about our culture and our beauty of Italy through food. And it was always something I loved.”
And as a tribute to her father, Meyer named her restaurant at 23655 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, The Italian Daughter.
“We were such a close family,” she explained. “I was taking inventory of my life, looking at how short life is and I thought, ‘I’m an Italian daughter.’”
Meyer moved to California in 1996 to help her father open a new restaurant in Coronado.
“It was supposed to be temporary but I decided to stay and that’s where, after years of helping my parents run their restaurant, I decided to open my first solo restaurant in La Jolla, California,” she said.
She sold it in 2007 but opened two more restaurants in Encinitas and Carlsbad and eventually sold them and moved back to Arizona in 2019 when her father got sick.
Meyer was looking at locations in the Valley to open another restaurant as “my father was getting sicker and sicker.”
“He had a location in North Scottsdale called Tomaso’s When in Rome. And he said, ‘Melissa, why don’t you take over that location?’ It had been closed during COVID and he hadn’t reopened it.
“I originally wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to take a restaurant this far north. I was looking for something a more in South Scottsdale. When it became clear my father wasn’t going to make it, I wanted to do it for him. So, I opened it as an homage to him.”
She was thinking of “all sorts of names” for the restaurant before settling on The Italian Daughter.
“I was at my dad’s bedside. We were all there together. Who I am as a person, I’m an Italian daughter. My love for family, my love for my culture, definitely my love for my father, that’s why I decided to name it that.”
The restaurant opened in April 2021 and survived the pandemic.
“I thought I was crazy, but I had enough experience,” Meyer explained. “That’s where my bloodline is. If I couldn’t survive in the pandemic, I don’t think anybody could have because it was really tough to navigate.
“Fortunately, I have my parents’ experience and years of my own to be able to figure out how to navigate through hard times. I’m not going to say it was easy because it certainly was not.”
The Italian Daughter has some of the same menu items that Tomaso’s offered, as well as the same style of cooking.
“I have a lot of our family recipes so, of course, all of my classic dishes like my Bolognese sauce, my marinara sauce, my meatballs, my Norcina sauce – all of those things are recipes I grew up with in my home and also at Tomaso’s.”
“Everything I learned in this business I learned from my father and my father’s mother before she passed away,” Meyer said. “I’m definitely carrying on that legacy and those traditional dishes.
“I do have other parts of the menu that are more reflective of myself in a more modern Italy, but I definitely have classics that I don’t compromise the original recipe for.
“The Norcina sauce is a beautiful truffle and sausage pasta dish. It’s phenomenal. I sell a lot of cioppino, and I do it in my father’s style which is a big, beautiful seafood stew with pasta.
“That’s one of our fan favorites. We sell so much of that. We highlight a lot of seafood at The Italian Daughter because my father was from Sicily, so seafood was prominent in our dining.”
Meyer said she offers a wide variety of Italian food to appeal to everyone.
“We do a lot of regional dinners in October, so every week we highlight a region,” she said. “One region in Southern Italy will be all about the seafood. If you go to the North, it’s all about the meat, the game and heavier dishes.”
Meyer hesitates to brag about what sets her restaurant apart from the competition.
“The Valley has so many wonderful restaurants, and I have so much respect for anyone in the business,” she said. “And I have a lot of respect for other Italian restaurants in the area.”
But if there’s one thing that sets her restaurant apart, it’s the “extension of true Italian hospitality that I learned from my father that shines through.”
“The guest is the most important person in the room for me, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them. I believe when you come into The Italian Daughter, you’re coming into my house. We’re treating you like family, like guests in our home.”
The restaurant has live music seven nights a week from 6 – 9 p.m. Two of those nights are instrumental. The rest of the time, it’s a big variety, including rock.
“We have a little something for everyone, depending on what night you join us. And it’s all in the lounge.”
Meyer also owns Patricia’s Pizza, which opened in January at 32607 N. Scottsdale Road, and continues her devotion to family.
“My mother’s name is Patricia. My father came to this country in 1969. He wound up in New York. At 20 years old, he opened up his first tiny pizzeria, his version of pursuing the American dream, and he called it Patricia’s Pizza.
“I just opened up that location in honor of my mom and my father’s humble beginnings. We specialize in Neapolitan-style pizza. My mother’s family is from outside of Naples.
‘We also have a wonderful homage to his original pizza place, which serves beautiful Sicilian-style square pies, as well.”
Information: theitaliandaughter.com, 480-404-6085; patriciaspizzaaz.com, 480- 454-7290.
Dining and Cooking