About Italia Gardens
Since 1931, we’ve come to realize that things have really changed. But a taste of the past can be fundamental when building tradition with your family and friends. There’s something that can be said about being served up a heap of pasta, topped in a sauce that’s been simmered the same way for over almost 90 years. A lot of Italian restaurants have modernized and strayed from an authentic experience, but we pride ourselves in giving you a traditional meal that will bring back memories and help you build new ones.
We’re taking a new approach by preserving the old ways.
Like grapevines, Italia Gardens’ story weaves and winds until it finds its way. Albert and Josephine Barone, Sicilian natives emigrated to the USA just after the Great Depression sank its claws into the American people. They suddenly found themselves surrounded by some of the hungriest people there ever were: auto workers in Flint, Michigan who had very little money.
The Barones knew their heaps of spaghetti covered with a rich, traditional, Italian sauce would hit the spot. And as simply put as that, Italia Gardens was on the map.
More than just an Italian eatery, we’re known as a place where people gather and maybe, just maybe, become something more than strangers before they leave the building, belly full, back onto the Michigan sidewalks. The family inheritance came to Don Haley, his Irish son-in-law, and his wife Enza who have ran it until they passed the restaurant along to the third generation, Don. The restaurant has moved and expanded its locations throughout its timeline but we never lose our passion:
To work hard at providing good food that moves people to engage with each other. To talk at the dinner table. To loosen their belts for a good meal and tighten their relationships with people they care about.
So come enjoy our food at one of our tables, grab a few plates for dinner at home, or pick up enough to feed a crowd.
Experience the taste of tradition.