Going Back to Our Founding Principles Made from Scratch, the History of Florentine of Grandville

The history of Florentine starts in 1970. It was opened as just a take-out—no restaurant, no bar, none of this stuff was here—just a regular take-out.

It was added on in pieces, I believe in four different pieces, and then it was sold in 1984, and I started working for the ownership in February 1986. So I never worked for the original owner. I worked for the second generation owners—Andy Jaffas and Marino Levas. And so at that point I thought, you know, I was using old world recipes, and being a 15, 16-year-old kid what do I know? You know? So then we bought the restaurant in ’96, and then Tony decided to come back and help us out to get us back to the original recipes.