Sutera family leaves restaurant business after nearly 40 years
Charlie Sutera was just 19 when his family took over the old San Francisco Saloon and Restaurant in the West Bottoms.
That was way back in 1976. He took over as owner with his wife, Sally Sutera, in the mid-1980s and added a Westwood restaurant in 2005, building up a loyal following there.
But it wasn’t enough. The Westwood restaurant closed Aug. 30 when its lease expired — ending the Sutera family’s nearly 40 years in the restaurant business. And with such a long legacy to say goodbye to, the Suteras waited until now to publicly talk about the closing.
“It’s like a death,” Sutera said. “My wife and daughters all worked there, my mom, Agnes, 98, would come in almost daily to roll silverware. Customers knew who was going to be working behind the bar that night even when I didn’t.”
“But there’s a lot of competition out there. And after 39 years, we are tired. It was just time.”
For some customers it was as relaxing to walk in the restaurant’s dining room as it would be to walk in their own dining room. And some customers even invited the couple over to their house for dinner.
Nearly four decades of home-style Italian food — and a Sutera family member almost always on-site — helped to create that homelike atmosphere.
A bit of Sutera’s history:
The Sutera family would often have as many as 25 people at their house for dinner, so one day they said: “Why don’t we open a restaurant, since we know how to do the cooking?”
In mid-1976, they took over the space that housed the Old San Francisco Saloon and Restaurant at 1617 Genessee, a restaurant that hadn’t more than lasted two years. They changed the name to Sutera’s Old San Francisco Restaurant & Bar and opened just in time for the 1976 GOP convention at Kemper Arena and at a time when only the faintest odor of cattle still drifted over from the stockyards across the street.
The late Vince Sutera, his wife, Agnes, their seven sons — Jim, John, Joe, Jerry, Jeff, Jay and Charlie (his mom once told him she couldn’t think of another boy’s name starting with a J) specialized in “Sicilian farm cooking,” using family recipes handed down from generation to generation. Dishes included linguine and white clam sauce, baked Italian sausage, Italian roast beef, and hamburger sandwiches served with a side order of tender rigatoni.
A 1986 Kansas City Star restaurant review said that while the decor was a little on the spartan side, “honest food (and plenty of it) makes up for a lot.”
Charlie Sutera said his brothers, Joe and Jeff, opened a Brookside location in 1982 (in the current Michael Forbes Bar & Grille space) and two other brothers, Jay and Jerry, opened a North Kansas City location. Those locations later closed.
The other brothers left the West Bottoms restaurant to pursue other careers. The two youngest Sutera siblings, sisters Joan and Jean, also worked in the West Bottoms restaurant before Charlie and Sally closed it on Christmas Eve 2008 to concentrate on their Sutera’s Restaurant & Bar in Westwood.
The Westwood restaurant opened a decade ago at 4730 Rainbow Blvd. and the couple’s three daughters — Jackie Sutera Valdivia, Angie Sutera and Jamie Sutera — worked there, as well as Charlie’s brother, Jerry, who had been a bartender nearly since it opened. Jerry Sutera passed away in 2014.
“That was hard, especially for my mom. Now it is hard for my mom to see the restaurant close. She said ‘This is the last nail in my coffin,’ ” Charlie Sutera said. “It is hard, 39 years. I don’t know anything else.”
Potbelly opens
Potbelly Sandwich Shop opened its new Mission restaurant at 6803 Johnson Drive today.
Potbelly is known for its warm sandwiches, hand-dipped milkshakes, made-to-order salads and live, local music.
The first Potbelly Sandwich Shop opened in 1997 and there are now more than 300 locations.
This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 11:32 AM with the headline "Sutera family leaves restaurant business after nearly 40 years."