By Patty Talahongva

    After 17 years of serving up lunch and dinner at 4622 N. 7th St., Raimondo’s is now cooking around the corner at 502 W. Camelback Road inside of the Days Inn hotel.  Why? Because the old property soon will be turned into a parking lot for Xavier College Preparatory.

    Ray LaVecchio is the original owner of this longtime Valley Italian eatery. Now 81 years old, he doesn’t regret one minute of picking up stakes in New Jersey and moving to Arizona and starting a restaurant … and he arrived in July! “I got a taste of this weather and said, ‘I think I can live with this,’” LaVecchio recalls.

    His first location was at 16th Street and Bethany Home Road. He ran a successful restaurant for 16 years before an electrical fire forced him to move to the 7th Street location. That was home for 17 years until this summer.

 

The new home on west Camelback Road, just steps from a light rail station, will be the largest location and also offers LaVecchio three banquet rooms in which to serve. The smallest banquet room holds 60 people and the largest holds 400 people. Raimondo’s also will offer room service for hotel guests and delivery service. LaVecchio is still deciding on the boundaries for delivery. Soon the restaurant also will be offering breakfast and a Sunday brunch.

    LaVecchio’s award-winning menu is expanding to include prime rib, steak and some fish dishes. Of course longtime favorites will still be on the menu. “The Eggplant Rolatini does not have a flour or bread crumb coating, instead we coat it with egg whites and rice flour,” says LaVecchio.

    The prices are very reasonable and of course he will have a full bar as well. Plus there will be plenty of parking in front of the hotel. In the future he also has big plans to create a dinner club complete with live entertainment. It will be open after dinner hours. 

    All his recipes come from his Italian family. “My father was an excellent cook without being in the business,” he explains.

    LaVecchio was the only one in his family who went into this line of work and he truly believes, “If you can succeed in the restaurant business, you can do anything.”

    He envisions more good memories will be made at this latest location. But it might be tough to top the one in 2000 when his grandson played for Notre Dame and they came to Tempe to play in the Fiesta Bowl. That brought a whole new bunch of fans into his restaurant.

“Notre Dame has a tremendous following,” he says. And he fed all his grandson’s teammates the week before the game. “Oh God Bless them, they ate!” he laughs. “They came in carloads.” And he still laughs when he calls it “the saddest day of my life,” because the team lost.

    Through the years he’s helped out when the Arizona Game and Fish Department venture into the woods to conduct surveys on wildlife. “They invite me every time,” he says, “I’m no fool. I know why—because I cook for them!” But LaVecchio doesn’t mind their suspected ulterior motives.

    “It’s therapy for me,” he says, “being up in the woods. I’m not a hunter. I just love to see the animals. I’m a nature freak all my life. I go hiking.”

    And through the years he’s also catered plenty of retirement parties for folks at Game and Fish. But he has no plans of retiring himself. He loves what he does and is eager to get settled in his new location.

    You can check out the new Raimondo’s for lunch and dinner seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. The phone number is 602-279-8948. The website currently is being updated; visit http://www.RaimondosofPhoenix.com.