Let’s start at the beginning...

From China to Long Island

Born in 1954, Frank Yang was raised on Long Island by parents who fled the Communist takeover of mainland China. His father, Dr. Ching Huan Yang, was an engineering professor at SUNY at Stonybrook. His mother, Teresa Shi-bing Yang, was an analytical chemist for Grumman Aircraft.

Yang’s brothers — both now doctors — were pointed toward bachelor of science degrees while Frank was deemed a better fit for a bachelor of arts degree. On the advice of his father’s brother, Dr. Thomas S. Wang, who also fled China and later became Secretary of Agriculture in The Philippines, Frank matriculated at Michigan State University to study accounting.

He’d worked in restaurants since age 15, and he pursued his culinary interests through The School of Hospitality Business at MSU. Under the tutelage of famed food scientist and inventor L. J. Minor, Yang stood out — to the extent he was asked to prepare a meal for the National Hotel and Motel Association’s 50th anniversary gathering.

On the menu: Beef Wellington for 400.

“In that audience were three of the six master chefs in the country,” Yang recalls. “They told me it was one of best meals they’d ever had, and they asked me to be sponsored by them to go to Johnson & Wales culinary school (in Providence, R.I.) after I finished my accounting studies.

“I was the first student (in a new program) where a grad from MSU could get their culinary degree. I was thinking I’d go to New York City and be an accountant. I said, ‘Sure, I’ve got a year.’”

How Do You Get to Louisville?

About the same time, Dominic Serratore was in Miami, working a grueling but edifying job at the five-star Café Chauveron.

Born in Philadelphia in 1951, Serratore was raised in food. His father Joe ran a door-to-door produce company called Joe Banana’s, then opened a nightclub with food called Little Joe’s in Doylestown, Pa. His mother, Louise, helped with the business and worked as a secretary and administrative assistant.

“My dad was gregarious, very open and extremely casual,” Serratore says. “It wasn’t just business for him. It was his lifestyle. He was a true people person.”

The younger Serratore studied restaurant administration at Bucks County Community College, then graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. He also envisioned working in New York City and interviewed at places like the Four Seasons. There were no openings, but his interviewers mentioned the Miami opportunity. Serratore jumped.

“Everyone was French, and they spoke French,” he recalls. “The dishwashers were Haitian, the busboys were French-Canadian. The chef was my dad’s age, and the sous chef was close. The captains were older, and they’d been in World War II. I was the American kid in there. I worked Entremetier (entrée preparer) in year one and Rotisserie in year two. It was 32 weeks, seven days a week.”

He did two seasons, Labor Day to Memorial Day, before joining the upscale Capriccio’s in Providence, R.I. Johnson & Wales later helped Yang get a job there, and Serratore was his trainer. They hit it off instantly.

Serratore’s wife Lorey was graduating from Rhode Island School of

Design, and he’d been on the road a lot — when he was off from Café Chauveron, he worked seven days a week at resorts.

“I told her I’d go where she wanted,” Serratore says. “She had one interview — at GE — and one job her whole life.”

After he rode in a Bicycle Across America event, he joined her in Louisville in the fall of 1978. Serratore expected to be here for a year.

He inquired at the Fig Tree, where chef Kathy Cary was making her mark, and Top of the Tower. To celebrate his 27th birthday, Lorey took Dominic to Casa Grisanti; he also hoped to speak with Chef Vincenzo Gabriele about a job. Vincenzo wasn’t there, but Serratore left an impression by pointing out an issue with the Hollandaise Sauce.

“They put sugar in it instead of salt,” he says. “It was a faux pas. They redid it. It was a lovely meal. Later, I came back to interview with Vincenzo for a sous chef position, and he said, ‘No, you can take over as a chef under my guidance.’”

Don’t Get on the Plane

In 1979, Grisanti was set to add a sister restaurant called Sixth Avenue and looking for additional managerial muscle. Yang was the corporate executive sous chef for Playboy Club International in New York City. With his accounting and culinary background, he showed acumen for managing labor and food costs. Serratore asked Yang to come to Louisville for a look.

“He told me I had to take it seriously,” Yang says. “I went through all the motions.”

He headed for the airport after the initial offer.

“They said, ‘If you come down here, you have to take a pay cut.’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m the wrong person for you … I expect a pay increase.’ They said nobody makes that kind of money down here, and I said then you need to find somebody else. Before I got on the plane, they made me another offer.”

Inflation reached 14 percent in 1980, leading to recession. Serratore recalls it was difficult to get financing for Sixth Avenue. The delay allowed Yang to focus on other things like talent attraction, and he recruited people like John Marzilli (opening Chef for Sixth Avenue), Paul Kruzel (opening GM for Sixth Avenue) and Bob Zelinski (Pastry Chef for Casa Grisanti).

Landing in a ‘Special Bubble’

Sixth Avenue’s roster eventually included a young Susan Stevens, who had no idea Yang would someday ask her to become his business partner.

Born in 1961 and raised in Louisville by Edward and Gloria Shrader, an eye doctor and artist, Stevens grew up with an appreciation of food. Her father researched interesting restaurants, and before family vacations he’d write to request reservations. Her mother helped Susan make elaborate gingerbread houses and Easter cakes.

Stevens earned a marketing and advertising degree from Mount Vernon College, then contemplated a couple of career paths — “either dining or horses,” she says.

Family friend Camille Glenn, who ran a cooking school and catering business and wrote about food for The Courier-Journal, recommended that Susan attend École de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris. She wanted to be a Garde-Manger, the chef in charge of cold foods.

“That was a real experience,” Stevens recalls. “Six days a week, 8 a.m. to 9 or 9:30 at night. The whole course was six months, all in French. I learned a tremendous amount.”

Glenn helped her land a position at Sixth Avenue in 1986. “It was like a special bubble somehow,” she says of the Grisanti organization. “I can remember so much of it clearly … it was my first job. It was so organized, so professional, and gave you all of the structure, whether it be lunch or regular dining or lunch for 200. We were known for having the best business lunch. These famous people would come to town, and they always came to Casa or Sixth Avenue. There were so many shows across the street (at Kentucky Center for the Arts). … To do all of that takes a tremendous amount of effort from everyone.

“You feel like you’re one part of many moving parts that are well thought out, that you can trust. It felt like a special place with special people, and the opportunity to be part of it was a little humbling.”

A New Concept for Louisville

In 1983, Yang became project manager on a prototype called Grisanti’s Casual Italian Restaurant in Bloomington, Ind. Imasco Ltd., owner of the Hardee’s fast-food chain, purchased Grisanti’s with plans to expand the concept into a national chain.

Sixth Avenue closed in 1989, and Casa Grisanti in 1991. Yang and Serratore took a buyout, and Yang had ideas that began with he and Serratore becoming partners in a new venture called Ditto’s Food and Drink. American dining trends were changing.

“It wasn’t about dressing up anymore,” Serratore says, “it was about meeting friends no matter what you were doing. Fusion and ethnic food had become more popular. We looked at places in Chicago doing this sort of cutting-edge thing and put our heads together on what our style would be.”

They bought the 1920s building at 1114 Bardstown Road, which originally housed a Model T dealership owned by Hubert Ditto and Buford Hartzell. The site most recently was Den of Steven antique mall, where Serratore had purchased an armoire.

(top) Thai salmon with steamed vegetables and teriyaki rice. (center) Pork Chop with a port wine sauce, mashed potatoes, portabellas, caramelized onions and sautéed spinach. (left) Medallions of beef with mashed potatoes, red wine sauce and tobacco onions.

Opening a new business wasn’t on Serratore’s radar. His father had lost his restaurant during a recession, and he’d seen good ideas fail.

“A lot of chefs crash and burn because they over-estimate their abilities,” he says. “You need somebody with a strong financial background to keep you focused and away from tangents.”

Someone like Yang.

“He’s very analytical — nothing about shooting from the hip,” Serratore says of his partner. “He’s like, ‘I want to see statistics, I want to see production sheets, I want to see usages. … I was raised more intuitive, a bit more footloose.”

During the Ditto’s build-out, Yang left space open in the back. He foresaw a deli and spoke with Stevens, who was managing Animal Crackers children’s clothing boutique, about playing a role. Time passed, Ditto’s opened, and Yang came back around. Stevens said yes.

“I really wouldn’t consider going into business with anybody else,” she says.

A Marriage Made in the Real World

Beyond talent, a few other words kept coming up when I spoke with Yang, Serratore and Stevens.

Loyalty, Honesty. Trust. Essential ingredients.

“When I decided to go into business with Dominic and Susan, my parents wanted to meet them,” Yang says. “They gave me the wink to say, ‘These are good people.’ They said, ‘You know, this is a marriage now, and for better or for worse, whatever the strengths and weaknesses are, at the end of the day you’ve gotta be in bed with them. There’s no divorcing here. There’s no replacing them. You grow with them.’”

Both restaurants mix old and new. The Ditto’s menu, for example, includes longtime favorites like ribs, shrimp, steaks, fajitas and crab cakes.

(Stevens calls Serratore “one of the best sauciers in the country.”) At Stevens Deli, the signature offerings remain corned beef and pastrami — not to mention its carefully researched matzo ball soup and house-made rye bread. Some of the signature wall paintings are her mother’s.

Yang always keeps an eye on the future. For example, the rapid shift to takeout during the Covid pandemic exposed deficiencies in Ditto’s online ordering system. It’s been completely redone, and the same process is underway for Stevens Deli. Yang also enlisted Spectrum Enterprise to target specific households with marketing messages, and he utilizes artificial intelligence to identify job applicants who look like a good fit.

He believes success is largely based on figuring things out.

“We’ve gotta figure out things in life all the time,” he says. “After I jumped from the sounding board of Grisanti, I could’ve landed flat on my face, but I took all of my experiences and learning and failures and used them to my advantage.”

As for those random occurrences — Yang ending up at Michigan State, Serratore coming to Louisville and so on — there’s another: after Serrratore graduated high school, his best friend invited him to Block Island, which is part of Rhode Island and just beyond Long Island. That’s where he met Lorey. Now Serratore is an elder in the Louisville dining scene — on “Secrets of Louisville Chefs,” he’s affectionately known as “grandpa.”

The pandemic recalibrated their succession plans, but they can each see a day coming where they pull back. Stevens’ 30-year-old son Jordan is running the deli now.

Yang retains his enthusiasm.

“Today the food scene in Louisville is very dynamic, and to be good at it, you have to be better than you were 10 years ago. … I can’t wait for the next 10 years.” F&D

BY TIM & LORI LAIRD PHOTOS BY DAN DRY