Pat’s Italian Family-owned Restaurant Expands with Fourth Location

Owner Greg Stevens reflects on how the business started and why he's been able to sustain generous portions at reasonable prices for families.

16 hours ago

Jamie Coelho,

Chicken parm at Pat’s Italian. Photo courtesy of Pat’s Italian.

Pat’s Italian restaurants are a local institution, now with four locations across the state. Owner Greg Stevens keeps the restaurant a family affair with his daughter running the business’s Cumberland location. The newest restaurant just opened in Warwick, joining three other restaurants in Coventry, Johnston and Cumberland.

Stevens originally started out in the bicycle sales business, but decided he missed the high-paced energy of hospitality. He started looking into options for opening a restaurant and came upon Pat’s Italian in Johnston in 2007, which was already running as a successful neighborhood hot spot. “From the outside, it didn’t look like much. Maybe a pizza joint, but I went up to the windows and peeked in to see if it was something I would be interested in,” Stevens says. “And when we walked in, it was like being transported to Italy. I mean, the colors, the service with the ties and the bistro aprons, the smell of the sauce.”

He was attracted to the energy of the restaurant. “We sat down in the back and we had dinner. It was busy on a Wednesday night, and I said, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’ It was the busiest place we had been to,” Stevens adds. “So I had their homemade pasta, I had their sauce, I had the chicken parm, and I just fell in love with the place.”

He spoke with the owner at the time, Pat Orlando, the restaurant’s namesake, and they came to terms. Ultimately, the Pat’s Italian brand was handed over to Stevens and became his family’s legacy. “We didn’t skip a beat, we kept what he had going,” he says.

Over the years, Stevens picked up other restaurants that he ran for awhile, but then turned those restaurants over to new owners and decided to only concentrate on the Pat’s Italian brand. Pat’s launched a sauce brand, then opened another Pat’s in Coventry, where Stevens grew up, then he opened one in Cumberland for his daughter to run. Next came the Warwick location as a restaurant anchor to an apartment building.

“Warwick brings back fond memories of my grandfather, Mickey Stevens, who has a sports complex named after him,” Stevens says. “He was an entrepreneur, and I always admired the fact that he had his own business. I think that’s probably why I got into business myself.”

Pat’s Italian is known for its consistently large portions at reasonable prices, and a menu full of best-selling dishes like the crispy chicken al fredo and chicken Sorrento (hand-breaded chicken, layered with eggplant cutlet, creamy ricotta, tomato-basil sauce and mozzarella cheese). Even as prices for food and ingredients rise, they still keep the menu affordable. “We have very little waste and we prep a lot of our own items and make mostly everything in house, including the sauce. So that cuts down on the cost a little bit,” Stevens says. “There’s not a lot of room for profit. In the restaurant business, you walk this thin line between red and black.”

The extra work that goes into the preparation and cooking is worth it for both the owner and the guests. “So many people say this food reminds me of something my grandmother made,” Stevens says. “We make everything to order.”

Stevens also takes pride in the fact that team members have stayed with the business for a long time. Many have been promoted from dishwasher to line cook to head chef. “Our chefs are long term chefs. We try to promote from within whenever possible,” Stevens says.

“And we had somebody retire this year. I mean, that’s how long we’ve been doing this,” he adds. “It’s fun to see families growing and coming in all the time, and then the kids end up coming in with their kids.” patsitalian.com