Exit Totino’s Italian Kitchen
By Mike Mitchelson

After 56 years in Northeast Minneapolis, Totino’s leaves the stage—but, hopefully, not for long.

The sun will rise. There will be mounds of sweet corn for sale in August. It will snow in December. These are things we take as a given—or for granted—in the Midwest. We also take certain institutions, such as a long-standing restaurant, for granted, assuming they will always be there. We’ll drive by that old restaurant and say, “Man, I’ve got to get back over there.” But there’s never any urgency, because, well, the place has been always been there.

That’s the story Steve Elwell, owner of Totino’s Italian Kitchen, receives from many diners who have wandered into the restaurant for one (or two) last meals before he closes the doors this fall. Totino’s has occupied the same space in Northeast Minneapolis since 1951, growing through the decades to occupy the entire ground floor of its building at 523 Central Avenue. Elwell hopes to reopen the restaurant in Mounds View, the city in which he lives.

Often when a business closes or moves, the neighborhood is transitioning, for better or worse. With Northeast becoming a “hip” area in Minneapolis, real estate prices have risen dramatically. Totino’s sits on property owned by Elwell’s mother, aunt, and other family members, and they decided not to renew the restaurant’s lease. “They decided to get out (of owning the property),” Elwell said. “And I can’t blame them.”

Elwell walked across the narrow, original dining room where the main entrance opens to the street, and pointed to an old Northwestern Bank advertisement featuring his grandparents in the restaurant’s kitchen. “They opened this place with 15-hundred bucks from the bank,” he said. “They started out in just this section, with the window (to the kitchen).”

The “they” are Elwell’s grandparents, Jim, who was a baker, and Rose Totino, both lifelong Northeast residents. The Totinos started the business at the urging of friends, who were impressed with the pizzas they made. The menu developed beyond pizzas to pastas, including hand-made ravioli—a tradition the restaurant has maintained.

Elwell spent a large chunk of his childhood in the restaurant, and when he was old enough, began working there. “In high school I shucked dishes, and in college I worked in the kitchen,” he said. When Joe passed away in 1981, Rose worked for Pillsbury for their frozen foods/Totino’s line (see accompanying sidebar) and was not directly involved in day-to-day restaurant operations. That duty was done by “a core group of ladies that worked there for 25 or 30 years,” Elwell said.

When he graduated college in 1987, Elwell took a year off from the restaurant, but came back when Rose offered to sell him the business—that group of women was ready to retire. Rose offered Elwell the opportunity to work for a year to see if he liked the lifestyle. He did, and bought the business in 1988.

The operation has remained a family affair; his mother did the books, and since her retirement, Elwell’s sister, Therese, took over those duties. His brother, Mark, works in the kitchen.


Transitions

While the elder Totinos’ pizza was the restaurant menu’s foundation, the hand-made ravioli became, perhaps, the signature dish, Elwell said. “We still use the original frames my grandma and grandpa had; we scoop every filling out by hand, and we roll all our own meatballs by hand. It’s labor intensive.”

They’ll make about 50 dozen raviolis during the week, along with other from-scratch menu items, including almost 200 gallons per week of Jim Totino’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe. “Since we announced (the closing), people are buying 15 to 20 quarts to freeze,” Elwell said.

The take-out aspect is the part of the business Elwell hopes to build up in Mounds View, within a building that formerly housed a Bridgman’s and, later, a Mattress Factory. “There really isn’t a restaurant there that does what we do—homemade, Italian-style restaurant.”

Response to the possible Mounds View location has been immediate, he said. “People (up there) are calling me left and right; there’s a lot of interest from the people in Blaine, Coon Rapids, Andover,” he said. The deal isn’t quite finalized yet, but it’s about “70 to 80 percent there,” he added.

Still, leaving the original Minneapolis location is tough. Many customers have eaten at the restaurant since its opening decade. “I’m getting a lot of calls here, people saying they’re sad to see it go,” Elwell said. “When we open someplace else, hopefully, people will follow. We’re a destination restaurant for a lot of people, they brought their kids here, then those kids brought their kids here. There’s been a lot of families coming in and taking pictures.”

Steve Elwell, owner of Totino’s Italian Kitchen. The restaurant closes its doors this fall after 56 years in Northeast Minneapolis. Elwell plans to reopen in Mounds View.


Totino’s…the frozen pizza?

Yes, those Totino’s Party Pizzas found in grocery store freezers across the country were developed by Steve Elwell’s grandmother, Rose Totino. The frozen disk of pizza is not a riff on what the restaurant produced, however. That fact has surprised first-time diners in the restaurant because of the link, Elwell said. “First, what comes out of our oven is rectangular,” he said with a laugh. “And it’s prepared totally, completely different.”

During the 1960s, Rose saw an opportunity to develop frozen pizza, Elwell explained—“She came up with that distinctive, crispy crust.”

In 1967, she opened a small plant in St. Louis Park to make the pizzas, while Joe stayed in the restaurant. The pizzas’ popularity grew and sold regionally, and Rose moved the operation to a bigger plant in Fridley, with the idea of taking the brand national. When the time came to do that in the mid-’70s, she sold the operation to Pillsbury, and joined that company to oversee the Totino’s brand.