Crystal Wise
Cafe Bella Italian
The first person to greet you at Cafe Bella will, most likely, be owner Eli Golemi, and chances are, she’ll be the one who says, “God bless you” on your way out. In between, as you dine, you’ll see her time and time again, seating guests, ringing up bills, dashing into the kitchen.
While many restaurant owners opt to leave their dining rooms and kitchens in the able hands of managers, Golemi is that rare owner who plays a pivotal role in her restaurant’s day-to-day — always there, always working, always in motion.
“No, no, no, no, I have to be here,” she says. “I cannot imagine not being here. I have to make sure the food tastes good. I have to help the waitresses. I have to greet everyone and let them know how much I appreciate them coming. I have to make sure everyone is happy.”
Golemi has much to do with why our readers chose this small cafe as their favorite Italian restaurant. Half of her 53 years have been spent here, first as a server and, for the past 13 years, as an owner. Every day the restaurant is open, she’s here, arriving around 12 or 1 in the afternoon to help open, leaving around 12 or 1 at night to help close.
She knows most of her restaurant’s guests by name. Those she doesn’t know, well, she will by the time they leave. It’s that kind of place, a nod to old Fort Worth, when diners struck up conversations with other diners and the owners and the servers and the bussers and leave having forged new friendships; that’s what a good neighborhood restaurant does.
“I like to know the name of every guest, every person who eats here,” says Golemi, who was born and raised in Greece. “I consider this my second home. I want customers to feel like it’s their second home, too.”
There is much to admire here, from the fresh flowers adorning every table, most hand-picked and arranged by Golemi herself, to the sheer energy of the expert staff and chatty patrons. It’s a spectacle just to watch the servers moving with ballet-like grace and precision through the tight squeeze of a dining room, carrying plates of spaghetti, fettuccine Alfredo, and eggplant parmigiana on their arms, like the waitresses in “Alice.”
The high energy of the dining room spills onto the covered patio — home to the restaurant’s most desired seats. There are better restaurant patios elsewhere in Fort Worth, offering lovely views of tranquil rivers, skyscraping buildings, and bustling nightlife. But, for some reason, diners here don’t mind waiting an hour to sit on a patio that is surrounded by a parking lot.
“It’s not about the view, it’s about the space,” Golemi says. “It’s their space. It’s where their friends and family get together after work or after school and can let go. It’s a patio, so people are more at ease than they would be in the dining room. They feel like they can have a lot of fun, and they do.”
Crystal Wise
Cafe Bella Italian
Cafe Bella’s menu is also a nod to old Fort Worth, echoing restaurants such as Prima and Milano’s. It’s made up of Italian classics — lasagna, baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, lobster ravioli, pizzas. Nothing flashy, nothing groundbreaking. Just solid Italian staples, done well, and reasonably priced.
Every once in a while, Golemi says, she’ll offer a dish that pays homage to her Greek heritage.
“I’ll do a special now and then that shows the type of cooking I like to do at home,” she says. “But people come here for the Italian food. There’s a lot of me and my style of cooking in each dish we serve.”
Each table receives a basket of freshly made rolls, still piping hot when you tear into them. To drink, there’s water and iced tea; there are no soft drinks. The restaurant is BYOB, and it’s not uncommon to see diners from different tables trying each other’s wines.
Many of these diners have been with Golemi since Day One, when she was a server and the restaurant was in a different location, with a different name. A spinoff of Prima called Bella Pasta & Pizza (both were owned by the same family), the restaurant opened in 2000 a few blocks away, in an old Dairy Queen on the Bluebonnet Circle. Four years later, Albanian owner Sal Kaba moved it to its current location, on the backside of the post-war-built Westcliff Shopping Center.
Golemi came to the U.S. when she was in her 20s, hoping her children would take advantage of the multitude of career opportunities that were lacking in her homeland; both her son, Arti, and daughter, Nikoleta, have since graduated college.
“When I first started working here, I didn’t know any English,” Golemi says. “My customers were the ones who taught me English.”
Through the years, Golemi worked her way up to managing Cafe Bella, her magnetic personality and seemingly bottomless supply of hospitality helping her cultivate a following. When Kaba retired, she became the sole owner, fulfilling a dream that she never knew she had.
“I had no desire to own a restaurant when I first came to this country,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t know I had a passion for this until I started doing it. I say, `God bless you,’ to my customers because I feel like He has blessed me. This life, this crazy life that I have, it’s a lot of work, a lot of hard work. But I wouldn’t change anything. I love it.”
