It’s 9 a.m. and Rudi Grisanti has already been in the kitchen for an hour. “Gettin’ things prepped,” he says, “seeing what we need. Mario just went and got groceries. Mario is his son and the most recent owner of Dino’s Grill, which has occupied this storefront on the corner of Tutwiler and McLean in Midtown Memphis since 1973. Little has changed in the past 50 years.

The first order of business every morning is making the spaghetti sauce, or gravy as it’s called. Three giant pots of it are cooked nearly every day. Rudi and Mario measure the ingredients by sight -- in handfuls and bunches. It’s tasty, but not fancy.