Morris Salerno, Jr. was hired at sixteen as an apprentice chef at a Dallas country club. He worked at the Fairmont in the 1970s, and at 27 went to the Anatole, where he became banquet director - thirteen restaurants, 386,000 light bulbs. "I was putting in a lot of hours at those places, sometimes well over 80 hours [a week]," he said later. "So I decided if I was going to put in that many hours I would do it on my own."
That was 1985. His grandmother Mela, the Sicilian immigrant whose recipes founded the family's restaurants, sold the fifteen acres of DeSoto farmland, and the money opened the first place, in Flower Mound, with his cousin Mike.
In December 1994 he opened The Grotto at 2300 Highland Village Road. For twenty years it was the area's special-occasion restaurant - D Magazine's words. In February 2014 it was remodeled and renamed BISTECCA – An Italian Steakhouse. "Same owner, staff, chef," Morris told his customers. The old bar stayed on as The Grotto Bar & Patio. That December, in Luxembourg, he won an individual gold medal at the Culinary World Cup. It hangs at home by his television. The dishes that won it are on the menu.
Head Chef Juan Dominguez has been there since the doors opened. So has a busser named Tony. Morris still cooks with his kitchen almost every night and still walks the floor greeting guests by name. Diners wrote about it in 2015. They were still writing this month: "My wife and I have been dinning with Morris since 1985."
Forty years in, this is the anniversary room. Bring your milestone - or ease in through the Grotto Bar & Patio - and the man whose name carried it all will probably come to your table.