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A note to readers • This article is part of an occasional series, the Redwood Road Challenge . Slightly hidden among the ubiquitous taco places and Chinese buffets on Redwood Road, you’ll find Siragusa’s Taste of Italy , one of the only Italian restaurants along this busy thoroughfare. Its owner, chef Ross Siragusa, grew up in Chicago, where “there’s an Italian restaurant on every corner,” he said, and the Alfredo sauce comes with plenty of cream.
Once he moved to Utah, though, Siragusa said he had a hard time finding his beloved “back East Italian,” so he opened his own place at 4115 S. Redwood Road in 2011 with his wife, April Siragusa. In May, Siragusa’s will have been operating for 14 years, during which the restaurant has built a reputation on its “old school” Italian-American food, reasonable prices, generous portions, friendly service and a comfortable, unpretentious feel.
“I think the atmosphere here and the vibe when you walk in is a really good one,” Siragusa said. “And I think people enjoy that. .
.. Let’s go casual and make it affordable and a good time, and serve great food.
” From “macaroni” to “The Mechanic” (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ross Siragusa at Siragusa's in Taylorsville on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Siragusa’s upbringing in Chicago was one surrounded by food. Every March, like many Italian families, Siragusa’s family would gather for a traditional St.
Joseph’s table, which was filled with vegetarian dishes in honor of the season of Lent. But their family events evolved beyond that more traditional format and became full-on feasts, with all holidays from Christmas to Easter being celebrated with “a huge table full of food,” Siragusa said. On Thanksgiving, he said, “you’d be lucky” if you could find a turkey on the table, because his aunts would fill the kitchen, cooking lasagna, homemade pizzas and all manner of “macaroni,” which is what they would call any type of pasta.
Acquainted with the world of food from a young age, Siragusa started out in the restaurant industry as a teenager, he said, bussing tables at Down the Hatch, a pizza, steak and seafood restaurant in Chicago. By the time he was 17, he was the restaurant’s kitchen manager. In his 20s, Siragusa worked in Florida for Specialty Restaurants Corporation, which operates restaurants in California, Florida, New York and Ohio.
Siragusa’s job would be to travel to restaurants under the company’s umbrella that were having problems and turn things around. He earned the nickname “The Mechanic” in that line of work. Just after the 2002 Winter Olympics, Siragusa moved to Utah to be with his children, he said.
Working at various restaurants, though, Siragusa grew frustrated by not being able to fix all the problems he saw, the way he could at his old job. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Siragusa's in Taylorsville on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. One day, he said, his wife looked at him and suggested he just open his own restaurant.
“Yeah, right,” he replied, and he walked away, which is when she threw a very real shoe at him and said, “Get back here, I’m serious,” according to Siragusa’s recollection. A month later, the couple came upon their current space in Taylorsville on Redwood Road. Six months later, after giving the spot an extensive overhaul, Siragusa’s opened.
“It was rough at first,” Siragusa said. “I mean, it’s always rough, but here we are, 14 years later.” Home cooking & community (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) An Italian accordion from the 1940s on display at Siragusa's in Taylorsville on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
From the maroon leather booths to the checkered table covers and Tiffany-style hanging light fixtures, Siragusa’s exudes a welcoming warmth. Siragusa applied the stucco to the walls himself, and the decor is his wife’s handiwork. The photos hanging on the walls were all taken by Siragusa’s brother on his travels to Italy and Sicily, Siragusa said.
Some of the artifacts in the restaurant were donated by guests. The gorgeous accordion on display was given to Siragusa’s by one of their first guests, a woman named Francine. Siragusa said the accordion had “been in her family forever,” and “she thought it would be a nice fit.
” A couple who are also regulars donated maps of downtown Rome, which are now hanging in the restaurant. “The community [has] been really supportive of us,” Siragusa said. But he credits his waitstaff with really setting the tone of the many meals that have been laid out at Siragusa’s.
“I think that one of the reasons that we’re doing well is because of my staff,” he said. “My staff is incredibly friendly, and I think that’s huge.” And the people those staffers serve range from blue-collar workers and businesspeople to young families and older folks, Siragusa said.
“Just about every walk of life you can imagine, I get. So we cater to everybody.” You won’t find Siragusa in the kitchen much these days — he said jokingly that his crew usually “kicks him out” and tells him to go home to his wife — but he still creates specials and oversees all the goings-on.
And he came up with all of the recipes, either by creating them from scratch or collecting them over the years and tweaking them as necessary. Siragusa describes his food as “classic Italian with a bit of an American twist.” He said the food in Italy is more basic than people would expect in the United States, so with some of the dishes at Siragusa’s, they’ve added more flavor and craft.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fettuccine Alfredo at Siragusa's in Taylorsville on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. The best example would be Siragusa’s Alfredo sauce, which Siragusa said is the restaurant’s top seller. In Italy, the sauce is traditionally made with just butter and cheese, no cream.
And where other U.S. restaurants would make the sauce in advance, at Siragusa’s the cream and butter don’t hit the pan until the dish is ordered.
“I think we have the best Alfredo in town,” he said. One special, the chicken gorgonzola, probably wouldn’t be found in Italy, Siragusa said, but people kept requesting it, and it evolved into two more specials: the shrimp gorgonzola and the steak gorgonzola, in a creamy sauce made with the pungent Italian blue cheese. “We’ve kind of adapted with the changing styles and gone out in a limb on some of these things, and usually they work,” Siragusa said.
For the most part, Siragusa is generous with his recipes, teaching cooking classes to people who want to learn how to make his dishes. He said, laughing, that there’s one recipe he won’t give out, to the consternation of his students: his classic marinara sauce. Siragusa’s has seen the price fluctuations plaguing other restaurants in Utah and around the United States.
He said that before COVID-19, he was paying $10 for a gallon of cream. Now it’s up to $18, “and I use a lot of cream,” he said. But in the end, Siragusa doesn’t let rising prices worry him.
“If I can just make a comfortable living for my wife and myself, I’m not here to become a millionaire,” he said. “I want to be comfortable, and I want people to enjoy.” (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Siragusa's in Taylorsville on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
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