You’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere – much less in a city the size of Alexandria – three different thriving restaurants owned by three siblings.
Yet, that’s something we have in Alexandria, thanks to the Brocato family.
Sam Brocato Jr., who turns 44 later this month, owns Brocato’s, a home cooking style breakfast and lunch restaurant. Older brother Phil, 48, and his wife Helena own The Main Dish & More, a lunch restaurant with hot meals and sandwiches, plus frozen food pick-up casseroles and specialty dishes. Youngest brother Ryan, 43, owns Three Potato More, a drive-thru lunch and dinner restaurant featuring everything from Philly steaks to gumbos and salads, not to mention signature baked potato dishes. All three are Monday-through-Friday operations.
At first glance, the genesis of this goes back to the early Nineties when Sam Brocato Sr. decided to get in the restaurant business. Yet, it really goes back to the Thirties, when his paternal grandparents, Vincent and Theresa Brocato, immigrants from Sicily, moved here from San Francisco and opened a grocery store on Lee Street. Then in June of 1941, with more than 100,000 troops headquartered at five miliary bases in the Alexandria area, came an announcement in the Alexandria Daily Town Talk:
“BROCATO’S CAFÉ TO BE OPENED HERE TUESDAY”
The newspaper story was about the opening of Alexandria’s “newest specialty restaurant featuring genuine Italian dishes” at 2403 Lee Street. “Mrs. V. Brocato, owner and manager,” the story went on,” was inviting the public to visit the new restaurant. The story explained that Mrs. Brocato had decided to make Alexandria her home after a visit from San Francisco. She also started the restaurant after “seeing such a demand for genuine Italian cooking.”
Although the restaurant, in its heyday, reportedly had waiting lines that stretched down the block, it eventually closed after the war.
Sam Sr. first felt a vocational calling to the restaurant business at a Catholic retreat in the early Eighties, and he answered the call by opening a convenience store/restaurant on MacArthur Drive in 1991. That soon morphed into a breakfast and lunch restaurant and then a full-scale Italian restaurant. Sam has been a part of various reincarnations of restaurant ownership since, including a stint in the late Nineties running Robbie G’s with George Simms.
Sam retired as manager of Brocato’s in 2018 and Sam Jr., who had been working at Brocato’s with his father, bought the place and has been running it since. Family ties also run through the other siblings’ entry into the business, starting with part-time jobs helping their parents out at work. Sam’s wife, Ellen, spent part of her working career in the family business.
Phil and his wife, Helena, bought The Main Dish in 2010 from Sam’s sister, Tresa Hugenroth, who started the casserole dinner order business with Diane Crow. It had close to a 20-year run, with Tresa as the sole owner the last 12 years. What started as a business from Tresa’s own kitchen moved to a store on Metro Drive. Five years ago, Phil and Helena moved it to Provine Place and then expanded it. Helena runs the restaurant while Phil’s main job is as a behavior analyst with ABA Consulting Services – the same business his mother, Ellen, founded and retired from some 18 months ago.
Ryan (Northwestern State ’05) had a career in sales before getting into the restaurant business.
“I tell people I went to college to get away from the restaurant business, yet I have found my way back,” said Ryan, who bought Three Potato More from a cousin, Frank Medica. Get this: he bought it in January of 2020, two months before Covid hit.
“Not only was I able to stay open, we thrived,” said Ryan, noting the benefits of a drive-thru restaurant during such a time of “keeping a safe distance” from one another. “Not only that, but we inherited a well-established business, then made some technological changes to help streamline the processes. We kept the same menu; rearranged the kitchen and updated the ordering process.”
Might there be rivalry – even fierce competition — among the three brothers/businesses?
“Absolutely not,” says Ryan. “We root for the success of each other. We share provisions, customers, any product another needs, knowledge.”
Alexandria can be a tough place to succeed in the restaurant business. Residents here have seen so many come and go. How to explain the success?
“We’ve got a very loyal following because of service and quality offered at all three,” said Sam, the patriarch of the group. He notes that goes back to the loyal crowds at the original Brocato’s Café on Lee Street, and there is still an old menu from that restaurant at the current Brocato’s. At least one elderly customer, big Sam said, recognized the menu as one she chose a meal from back then.
There’s also the many relatives and friends, with special relationships, that keep the places going. “I’ve had customers who bus tables,” says young Sam. “I’ve been a pallbearer at some former customers’ funerals.”
“We all treat our employees fairly, too,” Ryan adds, “which is a reason for low turnover of employees, and a lot of people try their best to stay local.”
“You know,” added young Sam, “the number one reason we’re successful is faith. Almost every day of the week we have a prayer group or bible study group that meets here for breakfast. I’ve had customers ask me to sit with them at the table so they could pray for me and my business.”
“No doubt,” adds Phil, who is a renown videographer on the side, “our faith, in asking God to lead us, is why we’ve done well. We’ve talked about my doing a video about all this and calling it ‘My Three Sons.’”
