About Giovanni's Italian Grill

John began his restaurant career in early 1970 by working as a dishwasher at Garramone’s Pizzeria & Italian Restaurant in Lakewood, Colorado. Over a short period of time he quickly moved his way up to being the manager. Over the next fifteen years John worked at several other restaurants that the partners of Garramone’s started up. During his time working for Tony Garramone and Paul DeMott John fell in love with the art of pizza making and Italian cooking.

In 1975, John married his high school sweetheart and over the next few years had a daughter (Jennifer) and a son (Jason). Although John loved the restaurant business in the mid 80’s he left Michelli’s Italian Restaurant that he had helped to open and run a few years before. Then in the spring of 1991 an old friend who had worked with John at Garramones called an offered John a partnership in his two glass shops. One of the businesses was in Meeker and the other in Rangely.  The family packed their bags and moved to Rangely to help run the glass shop. Although the glass business was going well, both Keith and John desired career changes. In the spring of 2003 an opportunity came available to buy a building that currently was housing a restaurant. Over the years this building had housed a couple of different restaurants as will as having been a motel at one time. John and Keith sold the glass company and John pursued opening up his own restaurant. On September 16, 2003 John and his son Jason (who had just graduated from Mesa State) had their first night of business as Giovanni’s Italian Grill. Although the building needed lots of repairs and they had hoped to remodel shortly after buying the place, the dinning room remodeling had to be put on hold for about a year. But the good news was that John quickly started creating great tasting pizzas, pastas, Strombolis’, hamburgers and steaks. What makes our restaurant special is that our pizza dough is made fresh daily, our sauces are homemade, our pizzas are topped with fresh ingredients, our special recipe makes our Italian sausage and meatballs supreme, and our employees are some of the finest.

In the beginning many of the locals thought that we were crazy to pick the name Giovanni’s. But once they learned that Giovanni means John the name made much more sense to them. Since starting up in September 2003 there has been many changes in the building and the menu. The dinning room has been redecorated and the kitchen has been remodeled. But one thing remains the same, which is Giovanni’s original commitment to friendly service, reasonable prices, and delicious food.