A Fort Worth Italian restaurant remembers Tony Bennett and a connection to New York

Mancuso’s Italian Restaurant is barely 35 years old, but in some ways it’s as enduring as its most famous customer, the late Tony Bennett.

With a lineage that dates back to 1950s restaurants in Utica, New York, and flavors that came to Texas in the postwar era of “red sauce Italian” platters, Mancuso’s is as much a throwback as the Bennett and Frank Sinatra tunes on the sound system.

For a generation, this was Italian food in Fort Worth: huge helpings of lasagna and pastas with rich sauces, cooked by actual Italians in long-gone restaurants such as the Italian Inn, Margie’s or Sardines.

Mancuso’s, 9500 White Settlement Road, opened later, in 1987. It lacks the dark mystery of much-missed Sardines or the Fort Worth location of Dallas’ old-school favorite, Campisi’s.

But Mancuso’s has something other old-time southern Italian restaurants don’t have:

A Tony Bennett connection.

Beginning in 2001, Bennett visited Mancuso’s or welcomed founder Cathy Mancuso backstage at local concerts, after both learned that Bennett had cousins in Utica. They also found that one of Mancuso’s cousins, noted arranger Torrie Zito, had played piano with Bennett and toured as his musical director.

“The first time he came, he said, ‘You know, this tastes like the food I used to eat in upstate New York,” said Cathy Mancuso.

”We started talking about where he played in Utica. It turned out my cousin played in his band. We looked at the photo and said, ‘Oh, my god!’ “

Zito was Bennett’s musical director and bandleader for seven years. Zito also arranged music for movies, TV shows and other bands, including the string part on John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Mancuso handed the restaurant off to local family members 20 years ago. Before she founded it, she worked selling Italian restaurants food and supplies, including a kitchen stint with founder Margie Lozzi Walters at Margie’s.

The first time Bennett visited, he was simply in town and looking for an Italian restaurant. He wound up talking over old times and dining four hours on stuffed mushrooms, lobster ravioli and linguine with red clam sauce.

“He’s just a good man,” she said.

Once, she missed a Fort Worth show and his staff called, saying Bennett missed her and asking if she was OK.

Another time, she said, Bennett played a casino near Utica and shouted, “Hello to Cathy Mancuso’s family out there!”

The restaurant itself is still an old-time Italian pasta house.

The house specialties are a thick helping of lasagna in meat sauce or a huge sampler platter with linguine, lasagna, ravioli, tortellini Alfredo, chicken parmigiana, Italian sausage and a meatball.

At Mancuso’s, that’s a light meal. So there’s also a double-sized “super sampler”: for two.

Other dishes include veal, chicken and shrimp scampi with mushrooms.

Mancuso’s was long known for its “Italian fish fry” fried catfish, although now the best catfish for miles around is directly across Loop 820 at Belzoni’s.

The house salad dressing is the familiar garlicky vinaigrette from other much-missed Italian restaurants.

It’s like a time-capsule Texas Italian restaurant, for anyone who misses the old days before corner pizza-and-pasta shops became ubiquitous.

Mancuso’s is open nightly for dinner; 817-246-7041, facebook.com/eatmancusos.