Taste: Oliva’s knows its history, aims for future

Oct 04, 2019 502

BY: Amanda Gray

If there’s one thing that carries through to Oliva’s Restaurant today, it’s history — both family history and local history. The restaurant, owned by Pat and Vicki Oliva, opened Feb. 8, 2010, but the Oliva family knew about the property long before, Vicki Oliva says. Pat’s father, also Pat Oliva, operated The Silver Bar out of the location from 1974 to sometime in the 1980s, she says. That fact drew them back to the property when they were looking at possible locations in the summer of 2009, and the rest, as they say, is history.
 
“It means that much more, with that history here,” she says. It’s been a few different bars, and at one time a barbershop. Pat Oliva himself comes from a restaurant background, having helped open Reggio’s on Jefferson and Rainbow Inn, now RBIs, in the past. He had left the restaurant business for a few years to work for the city of Mishawaka but was laid off during the Great Recession. He saw it as an opportunity to get back into what he liked to do.

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SOURCE: https://www.southbendtribune.com

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