GET DAILY REPORT FREE
For nearly 60 years, Gino’s Italian Restaurant has been a Baton Rouge institution, built on family recipes, perseverance and the force of its matriarch, “Mama” Grace Marino.
As 225 writes, Gino immigrated from Siculiana, Sicily, to Baton Rouge with his mother and sister in the late ‘50s, and the family initially started serving their family recipes in a modest 35-seat spot on Perkins Road.
In 1975, the family moved Gino’s from its original 35-seat home to a multi-room restaurant with seating for 220 on Bennington Avenue. It wasn’t a smooth transition—the Marinos worked day by day to scale a sustainable business, cutting costs and streamlining operations. Still, throughout the period of trials, Gino says the team was driven by one of his mother’s most important directives: consistency.
Fifty plus years later, and even after Grace’s death in 2017, Grace’s presence still informs every aspect of the business today, Gino says.
