Brix restaurant, north of Yountville, is the present day incarnation of the Grapevine Inn, opened during the Great Depression by Gussie Menoggi.
Restaurants are facing great hardships as a result of COVID-19, but there are, and always have been,challenges in the business, as well as individuals willing to take them on. These include Gussie Menoggi, who, during the “Great Depression,” 1936 to be exact, she opened the Grape Vine Inn, a beloved former Napa Valley restaurant and predecessor to Brix Restaurant.
Located just north of Yountville, Menoggi opened the Grape Vine Inn as a means to augment her family’s income. Apparently, their upvalley ranch was not generating enough money for the Menoggi family to make ends meet. Menoggi was well suited for the restaurant business. She was described as being an independent and decisive woman with a take-charge attitude yet good-hearted and generous in both her figure and nature. But Menoggi’s most important and well known trait related to food was her cooking talents.
When she first opened her inn, it included the 25-seat restaurant and bar, plus a boarding house. The accommodation portion of the business consisted of eight cabins built as alternative housing for veterans. Apparently, some of the veterans wanted housing close to but not on the Veterans Home of California grounds in Yountville.
An additional reason for both the cabins and the Grape Vine Inn’s location was a California law. Until about 1970, it was illegal to establish a bar or liquor store less than one-and-one-half miles from a California college, university or veterans’ home. The Grape Vine Inn was purposely placed just beyond that limit.
This close proximity to the Veterans Home supplied a regular clientele for the Inn. When the veterans living at the Home wanted to imbibe in an alcoholic beverage, they simply called for a cab. However, those who resided at the Inn just strolled into the bar. Regardless of their place of residency, Menoggi and her staff found the veterans to be interesting characters who told (or possibly spun) equally as interesting stories about their lives.
Although appreciative of those veterans, their fascinating stories and dependable patronage, Menoggi found their “drunken benders” intolerable. As a result of that abuse of alcohol, the cabins were closed down within a relatively short time after their opening. But Menoggi put them to good use as housing for her employees. In addition to free housing, the Grape Vine Inn staff also received three complimentary meals every day. As for the fate of those cabins, with time having taken its toll, all but one of those buildings were razed in 1995.
The original Grape Vine Inn restaurant was rather small with seating for only 25 guests. But it was still a profitable venture, primarily due to its classic Italian cuisine and ambiance. Another contributor to its success was the fact that it had very little competition.
Many local residents considered the Grape Vine Inn the place to go for special occasions as well as “star gazing.” When visiting the Napa Valley, celebrities such as Rock Hudson, Herb Caen and Charles Laughton customarily dined at the Inn.
The Inn continued to grow in popularity, especially during the post-World War II era. The place was always packed and its parking lot overflowed into the neighboring farms and driveways. In its heyday, and during its peak season of summer through fall, the Inn had 62 employees.
By the late 1940s, Menoggi, wanting to retire, sold the business to her daughter and son-in-law, Florence and Lee Carbone. Also around this time, an Italian immigrant by the name of Sabina began working at the Inn as its chef. In addition to her excellent culinary skills, Sabina had brought all of her Old World recipes with her to the Inn.
Over the next couple of decades, the ever-increasing popularity of the Grape Vine Inn exceeded its capacity. So as the 1970s approached, the Carbones created a revitalization and expansion master plan for the property.
By mid 1977, the project was completed to include a banquet room, reconfigured main entrance, enlarged dining room to accommodate 250 guests and doubling the bar seating to 50 patrons. The dining room remodel took four months and $175,000 to complete.
The Carbones continued to own and operate the Grape Vine Inn for about another decade. In 1986, they marked and celebrated the Grape Vine Inn’s 50th anniversary. Shortly thereafter, the Carbones sold it to Richard and Linda Greene in May 1986.
The Greenes converted the landmark into their third “S. Claus, a holiday gift shop and dessert cafe. This retail phase of the Grape Vine Inn history was relatively short. By August 1994, the Greenes had sold the property to Don and Donna Kelleher. For the next 20 months, the building and its surroundings were transformed, once again.
After leasing the revitalized property to Yountville Partners Inc., the former Inn was returned to its glory as a fine dining establishment. On March 28, 1996, the Grape Vine Inn was reopened in its newest, and current, incarnation—Brix Restaurant.
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Email Rebecca Yerger at yergerenterprises@yahoo.com.
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August 10, 2020 at 06:15AM
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Memory Lane: The Grape Vine Inn - Napa Valley Register
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