Mazzoni’s Cafe
12003 Shelbyville Road
Louisville, KY 40243
(502) 451-4436

“The oyster rollers were brought from Italy. People that wanted to have a new life [in America] would come here and, actually, at the original [Mazzoni’s], the oyster rollers lived on the third floor. And they would run low on oysters because they didn’t really freeze anything at that point in time, [so] they would have to wake them up, and they would come down and roll oysters.” – Greg Haner

In 1884 Phillip Mazzoni opened Mazzoni’s, a tavern on Third and Market streets in downtown Louisville. Along with beer, Phillip sold a few items to augment his business: hot dogs, boiled eggs, and the iconic Louisville bar food, rolled oysters. As far as anyone knows, the Mazzoni family originated the rolled oyster: a trio of a few bivalves rolled in a thick breading and then fried.  When Prohibition hit in 1919, beer stopped flowing from the taps, and rolled oysters took center stage. Other items were added, including hot tamales, which first appeared on the menu in 1921. Over the years, Mazonni’s Café has had a few different locations. In early 2008 fifth-generation owner, Greg Haner, moved the family restaurant to its fourth location on Louisville’s east side.  Cold beer, tamales, and rolled oysters are still the cornerstone of the menu, but the new Mazzoni’s also offers vegetarian options and a full bar. Tastes in Louisville may have changed, but the rolled oyster has stayed exactly the same. It’s still made from the same recipe Phillip Mazzoni used more than a century ago.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subject: Greg Haner, fifth-generation owner
Date: January 17, 2008
Location: Mazzoni’s Café
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans

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Amy Evans:  This is Amy Evans on Thursday, January 17, 2008, for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m in Louisville, Kentucky, and I am at the new and soon-to-open [new location of] Mazzoni’s here, and I’m with owner Greg Haner. Greg, would you say your name and your birth date for the record, please?

Greg Haner:  My name is Greg Haner, and my birth date is November 21, 1963.

Could you start at the beginning with the history of Mazzoni’s and kind of give the background and your more than 100-year-old establishment here and your family involvement?

I am the fifth-generation owner of Mazzoni’s Oyster Café Restaurant. It was started in 1884 by five Mazzoni brothers, who migrated here from Genoa, Italy. And they all came and started in the tavern cuisine at various locations…The one brother, Philip, had his establishment on Third and Market [streets] in downtown Louisville and that’s what really carried on the Mazzoni name over the years because all the other ones pretty much retired from the business, and Philip’s restaurant carried on and has been running for 125 years.

Pretty much, it started out as a tavern…It was pretty much a liquor establishment. They would offer you a frankfurter wiener, a boiled egg, or a rolled oyster with each drink to enhance business. And when Prohibition became along in 1919, Mazzoni’s became a restaurant and never really adapted back to the bar scene. We’ve been serving some homemade specialties, the original rolled oyster, which is a three to four oysters encased in a cracker meal breading that is lightly rolled and deep fried and as the outside—so it gets golden brown. The inside seals and the oysters burst, and the liquor from the oysters makes the whole morsel on the inside taste like an oyster. Some people might call it a scalloped oyster fritter. It’s what’s made Mazzoni’s famous, along with other soups and sandwiches that warrant their own fame…We’ve been doing it a long time, and we take special care in the product in order to make it the best it can be. And it is what has kept us in business for such a long time.

What else can you say about the origination of the rolled oyster? Is it something that originated with the family or being here in Louisville or the neighborhood?

As far as the origin point of the rolled oyster is concerned, it could have been that it came from Italy, or it was just that as these brothers knew of oysters and knew that nobody had them inland, they were on the coast, and that’s where he got them. Nobody was shipping things across the country. Well, but at that point in time they had the river. They had the ways you could get oysters either, you know, by coming up the river or you could—you could truck them over, so pretty much they were taking something that hadn’t been exposed in this area. And, at that point in time, you know, Louisville was a river town. And because of the falls in the Ohio, everybody stopped in Louisville. So to be able to get product from the East Coast and bring it here it was—all the oyster rollers were brought from Italy. People that wanted to have the experience of the—a new life would come here and, actually, the original location on 222 South Third Street had—the oyster rollers lived on the third floor, and they would run low on oysters because they didn’t really freeze anything at that point in time. They would have to wake them up, and they would come down and roll oysters because the kitchen was on the second floor, and they would send it down to the barroom by dumbwaiter. And when they—one of their—when I was trying to determine, you know, why—why the previous generations had such great success, they said there was the Sherman Minton Bridge going across Kentucky to Indiana, and they had 1,000 people a day working around the clock building that bridge. And he said [Laughs] Mazzoni’s was about three blocks from the river and everybody was walking right across the front door to work their shift on the bridge for that three years, and they just happened to be in the right location.

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So would the recipe for the rolled oyster and other things that were being served at the restaurant in the early days, would those have come directly from Philip Mazzoni or his wife or countrymen, or where did they come from?

I would say, as you would come to the states, you would probably bring some of the heirlooms. I question because Mazzoni’s had such a wide variety menu. We saw the rolled oyster and individually breaded pan-fried oysters and oyster stew, but on the original menu we had a homemade hot tamale with chili. Now I know it was on the menu board from 1921.

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So are the recipes that started Mazzoni’s, do you still use the same ones for the rolled oysters and the tamales, as far as you know?

Yes. And I always find that in life, people that are involved with it, everybody wants to add their little flare. They want to make their little change, and the biggest thing you fight with is everybody wants to give it that little twist when all you’re saying is, “No, I want to make it the same way I made it for the last few years.”…But it’s the difference of being consistent, and we’ve done a real good job of that over the last 125 years.

So tell me, then, a little bit more about the family tree of how the restaurant has changed—changed hands over the years and how you got back into it.

Pretty much, I—I have a Management Degree from Indiana University, and I worked in the restaurant all through high school, and I wasn’t going to be in the restaurant business the rest of my life. And my brother, who went to the Purdue University Hospitality School, you know, he seemed like he might go into the business. And as it was he got out and went into marketing and has now worked to—worked in a couple fields and how he’s working with Yum! Brands as a Vice President of Franchise—Franchise Sales, I believe, and knowing good and well that his—his coming from the restaurant business roots of 100 years had to help him in that journey, not to mention he’s a very talented individual. But he pretty much got out and got back in the restaurant business, and I wasn’t going to be in the restaurant business and I ended—and now I’ve been here, after working at the corporate restaurant level for seven or eight years. I came back in 1991 and bought the company in 1996 and—and have been home ever since.

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Tell me about this bar here that you brought of storage to put in the new place.

Well Mazzoni’s was at its original location on 222 South Third Street since 1884 to 1976—I think it was ’75, possibly. And pretty much, it was there; it was built by Bittners out of Louisville—a mahogany bar. When we transplanted that to our next location in downtown Louisville at Seventh and Jefferson, they pulled the back bar away from the wall and, to show a sign of the times, they used to have hand bills that—besides the morning and afternoon newspaper, people would advertise by sticking a hand bill in the front window of businesses. And when they pulled this back bar away from the wall, one of the good things that happened with the move is that about 100 artifacts of old Louisville fell out, and there was—about twenty-five-percent of them were dated by the year between 1917 and 1934, and some of the other ones weren't dated…And a lot of these signs are posted in the restaurant and will be, you know, “Burlesque at the Gaiety” or “Wrestling” or “Boxing” or how much a cab ride is, you know, a two-way cab ride for twenty-five cents, stuff like that. But it covered pretty much the entertainment scene. So it shows a little bit of the richness and the heritage of Mazzoni’s and Louisville.

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Do you think you’re going to keep a lot of your customer base from the [Taylorsville Road] old location?

They always say, generation after generation agree, Mazzoni’s Café is sure to please. A lot of generation business. A lot. You know, we have a lot of people that come in—grandparent, parent, and child just because everybody remembers their trip to Mazzoni’s as a kid because it’s a little different, you know. To push a bowl of oyster crackers to the young kid at the bar is just—it’s a one of a kind experience that really sticks with you. I feel strongly that I’m a destination location because of the original rolled oyster that’s unique and synonymous with Mazzoni’s that I’ll have the people come. And I would say that I had a lot of loyal regular customers in my old location, and I feel for those, but for the overall benefit of the customers and friends of Mazzoni’s, people are going to see a much more vibrant location, and that’s exactly what we need.

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I wonder if, given the old standing traditions of bar food coming from Mazzoni’s, were there any specialty drinks or anything coming from Mazzoni’s in the early days?

Tap beer, pretty much up until today. We were pretty much just straight beer and sodas, and then we got into a little bit of a beer and wine. But at the new location, because of tight economic times, you pretty much have to look at possibly selling somebody a mixed drink, and that’s what we’re doing in this location.

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Back to the rolled oyster again, it’s my understanding that in [Louisville’s] Germantown [neighborhood] a lot of those taverns have had rolled oysters on the menu for quite a long time.

I would refer back to Mazzoni’s. Over the years, during the 120 years, there was another location—a competitor named Al Kolb—K-o-l-b—and Al Kolb’s had oysters, and he was a competitor, and he was a competitor up until about, oh, [nineteen] ’63 to ’65. And then, for whatever reason—they were not in the fifth generation like Mazzoni’s, so it sort of fell away and there wasn’t any competition there. But the raw—I would say Mazzoni’s made the rolled oyster famous, and other people have tried. They do serve them in the grocery store, but it’s definitely a little heavier than the light airy oyster you would get if you came to the restaurant. So other people have rolled oysters probably because we had them for years and years and years. When I bought the operation in Germantown at Flabby’s [in 2000], I brought the rolled oyster down, which sort of carried it on and, you know, we sort of kept away from like, you know, supplying them around the city because your shelf life is so short. You get about two days, and you got to move them in two days, and I haven’t really found a good way to freeze them and make them exceptional. So we roll them and we cook. And that’s what’s kept us to be the premier rolled oyster company. But the others have them, or they talk about having them. I don’t think they have them as much anymore just because they, you know, you’ve got to have somebody that’s producing those for you, and there’s an art to the rolling technique. If you talk a little bit about that rolling technique, realize you lightly dust an oyster in a cracker meal breading, and you set them off to the side so they can set up, and then after you set them up you create a dip of oyster liquor and some spices and flour and, as you pick up three to four oysters, you dip it in this pastinga as it was called. Some people call it a dip. And you drag it into your cracker meal and then you encase it in cracker meal, but you pick it up in your hand and you sort of turn it three-quarters of a turn not touching it too much because you don’t want it to be heavy. So it’s really a rolling process that you need to sort of flip it around in your hand without touching it too many times and then give it a final press which encrusts those oysters inside without not having any oyster on the exterior of the breading. Because when you would take and deep-fry that, if you have an oyster out, it just blows out the side and you can't serve it. So the technique is to be able to roll it and encase the oyster in a cracker meal so it can be sealed in order to be fried.

So what else do you have on the menu at Mazzoni’s, and are you going to be adding anything new when you open this new location?

Mazzoni’s originally started as a fry kitchen, and when I joined the company in 1995, I sold seventy-percent oysters and thirty-percent everything else. And we worked really hard to balance that out because, at that point in time, oysters were very volatile and you couldn’t get them and then you had to tell people you were out. And then so we balanced the menu out to where we’re like thirty-three-percent oysters and thirty-three-percent fish—codfish—and thirty-three-percent [other] food. And we sort of balanced all that out and it, you know, has made it a little bit more manageable.

Our base menu started out as about fifteen items and, in my reign, I sort of have enhanced that to about fifty items because I was a fry kitchen from the start. We have—we’ve worked at it that. You know, now we serve fifteen fresh vegetables a day, so we have the light choice. And you can come in and order a vegetable plate, and you pick the vegetables, you know. We have—order an eggplant for, you know, $1.95, whereas most people want to sell you a side dish for $7.00. But [we have] a whole lot of homemade fresh vegetables that you wouldn’t find anywhere else for a light choice. We’ve—besides the fried oysters and codfish that people, you know—has made us famous and been our, you know—with consumers’ trends changing you—you try to make sure you offer the other people something so, you know, we have, you know, six or seven pasta dishes and we make our own—make our own sauce and we—we have the—the vegetables; we have some vegetarian sandwiches, artichoke and provolone, or a Moosewood veggie sandwich, which is taking a medley of some different vegetables and searing it on a grill and adding garlic and blue cheese, which gives you a nice—nice taste inspired by the—the Vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook, which—which has, you know, has a lot—a nice following. We do a Philly cheesesteak sandwich because we—one of our employees long ago was—did it as a sixteen-year-old job, and he’s like, “I can tell you how to make the best one,” and he was right. It’s the best one. [Laughs] Other than that, we bread our own chicken tenders, so they’re light and airy, you know. It’s all—any more, a lot of the products of everybody sort of getting into—you’re not getting whole—whole products anymore; everybody wants to—to juice them or pump them with something and sometimes that’s acceptable because you’re trying to keep it moist, but when it’s just the sheer fact because they can add twenty percent and charge you the same, it’s a big game because nobody tells you they’re doing it. You got to figure it out on your own. But, you know, you start getting to where that kind of stuff happens, and you feel like you’re—you know, I always laugh because I feel like you’re licking on a salt lick like a horse, but enough for the humor.

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So since you brought this old bar out of storage and are featuring it here in this new restaurant, are you bringing anything out of storage, either literally or figuratively, like a hard-boiled egg with a cold beer?

I would say a couple, you know, we have a lot of artifacts that will go on the wall, once the place gets cleaned up…But I have a great northern white bean soup that we make from scratch, and it’s excellent. And we have a lot of followers just for the bean soup here, as well as the chili, and that’s what I find interesting. You know, a lot of these corporate stores, they come out and they sell a sub or a chili or they sell—well I’ve been doing it, and we do it all. We make them all and do them all, and we’re not really keying in on one or the other…But along with bringing on a full bar and toying with some Old Fashioneds and drinks of that nature

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Well, do you foresee another 100 years?

I know I got twenty years where I’m at, and that puts me at about sixty-two and deciding what I want to do, and I don’t know. I think the style of Mazzoni’s with the history, I see us definitely clipping off another twenty. I could probably see us having that 150-year anniversary as we roll on. Sometimes I get leery of whether the production of oysters will fall away

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Have you ever been anywhere or heard of anyplace that has a rolled—rolled oyster outside of Louisville?

I’ve heard stories about how they have rolled oysters in Nashville but nothing I can, you know, go down and check out or put my finger on. So, you know, that being said, they say, “Oh, it’s down there, but I haven’t seen it, I haven’t heard it.”

Well is there anything that I haven’t asked you or hasn’t come to mind earlier in the course of our conversation that you want to make sure to add before we finish up here?

I would say, the big thing that keeps you moving forward is that you don’t change quickly. And that’s served us well, even though some people think you need to keep adapting and keep moving. We’ve sort of stayed the course and not really changed what we do too much or get too flashy in one direction or another, and that’s served us pretty well. And that we try to give good, Southern hospitality and treat people [the way] you’d like to be treated yourself, and that’s served us real well.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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