Message Inn A Bottle – Pioneer Italian restaurant changes hands
Silvio Petoletti in front of the Bottle Inn, sometime in the 1970’s. Photo courtesy Silvio Petoletti When Silvio Petoletti talks about the early days of the Bottle Inn, he reminisces about a dining scene that is almost unimaginable to Millennials. In 1974 Hermosa Beach had only about two dozen restaurants rather than the sixty-odd places that flourish now, and high-style Italian food was not a big draw. “When we first opened it was tough to be just Italian, so we called it Bottle Inn Restaurant Continental Italian Cuisine,” Petoletti said. “We had escargot on the menu, and that made us Continental. Almost all of our wines were French, because we couldn’t get good Italian wines then. Eventually we just said, we’re Italian, we’re going to feature the real cooking of Italy. It wasn’t easy… We couldn’t get people to eat risotto because Americans then thought of rice as a side dish, not a dinner item. We put the traditional saffron rice in chicken stock on the menu, but nobody ordered it. We had to put steak or shrimp in it, and then they said, that’s a meal.” Another prominent South Bay restaurateur has vivid memories of the era when the Bottle Inn was making that transition. “I…
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