Oklahoma City restaurant’s key dynamic is heritage
Vito’s Ristorante owner wants customers to feel like part of the family
By Dave Cathey
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Published: October 21, 2009
Vito’s Ristorante, 7521 N May, is named after Cathy Cummings’ Uncle Vito. An enormous black-and-white photograph of the man who inspired the name hangs on the wall, flanked by other framed family photos.
Chicken Marsala at Vito’s Ristorante in Oklahoma City. Photo By John Clanton, The Oklahoman
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Vito’s Ristorante
→Address: 7521 N May Ave.
→Phone: 848-4867.
→Hours: 5 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays.
→Coming attractions: As if the family atmosphere wasn’t thick enough, the restaurant is in the midst of giving birth to a new family member. The Cummingses are splitting Vito’s space to open a new "street food” concept. Some construction has begun, but the licensing process has been slow. They hoped to open in November but said it could be early January now.
"No problem,” Cathy Cummings said. "It’ll open when it opens, and when it does, it’ll be great.”
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Family and food were synonymous in Cummings’ upbringing, and she’s applied that dynamic to her career and her own family.
Her mother and both her aunts grew up supported by a grocery store in
Kansas City. That store begat Italian restaurants for each of them at one point or another over 35 years.
Cummings began working in the family business at age 10.
She married chef Sean Cummings, with whom she moved to
Oklahoma City in the early 1990s.
"We opened Boca Boca together,” she said. "And I fired myself from there after three years. I kept trying to add Italian dishes to the menu, and Sean told me if I wanted to do that, I should open my own place. So I did.”
Six years later, Vito’s is going strong with a staff that’s been with her since the restaurant opened. Her three daughters, ages 15 to 22, all work at the restaurant — sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes out front.
That sense of family inspires everything
Cathy Cummings does. Every person who walks through the door is immediately treated as family, making repeat business common.
Every dish on her menu is a family recipe. She bakes her own bread, makes all her own sauces and takes the time to make sure everything meets her standards.
"What they’re eating is what I would want to eat,” Cummings said.
And that’s usually the case. The staff eats dinner together before service; Sean generally eats dinner before heading back over to his own restaurant, Sean Cummings Irish Pub.
"It’s a real comfortable environment,” Cathy Cummings said. "I want people to feel like they are coming into my home when they come in here. Everyone just wants to feel good and wants some kind of camaraderie with each other. "
The menu is organized in classic Italian style, with multiple courses and plenty of entrees you’ll recognize including lasagna, ravioli, veal parmesan and chicken marsala.
"Our chicken marsala is to die for,” Cummings said. "Ours is a white sauce with fresh green and red peppers with lots of fresh vegetables.”
She also features lesser-known items such as cioppino, an incredible seafood stew loaded with fresh fish, shrimp and mussels.
Relax, have a glass of wine — fuggitaboutit. Nothing to fear, Uncle Vito has your back, because once you enter the restaurant he’s named for, you’re part of the family.
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"Sauce" is thinner and flows some across the plate, this stuff is thick like a white gravy. Take away the veggies and it looks like something an okie would drown a chicken fried steak with....
White sauce is not intended to be ruined with vegetables. White sauce is white sauce and stands on it's own. Adding to the basic "mother sauce" merely covers up inept preparation and poor quality.
I wonder how many chefs (and I use that term loosely, especially here in okieland) know how to fix a broken hollandaise sauce? I'm sure most of them are used to the prepackaged dry powder that you "just add water" to prepare and would have no idea.....