From the Kitchen of: Gondola Inn

Favorite tastes from dining tables gone by

Frank Pellegrin, founder of the original Gondola Inn on West First Street in Fort Myers, knew as a small boy in Italy that someday he would own a restaurant where “everyone would be happy to eat.”

(Frank Pellegrin’s Gondola Inn, c. 1930s)

His family moved to the United States, and while in the middle of a Buffalo, N.Y., winter in the 1920s, he heard Florida was the place to be. He bought a barge, outfitted it as an Italian restaurant, and floated it on the Caloosahatchee.

Diners liked the novelty, but it was tricky getting on and off the boat, especially if you had sneaked some adult beverages into the dining room. There was the added problem of some diners getting seasick. The whole town celebrated when Pellegrin put the barge on pilings and reopened it as a riverfront restaurant in 1930.

(Frank Pellegrin, Sept. 24, 1936, Fort Myers News-Press)

Business boomed, and he was able to open an expanded restaurant in 1936, with seating capacity for hundreds. Seafood – fresh off the boat – was the main attraction by then, and the restaurant was especially famous for its shrimp dishes and its broiled pompano.

Pellegrin sold to a larger hospitality concern in 1943, and then the restaurant caught fire in spring 1948. George D’Alessandro and Charlie Knapp, with years of local hospitality experience, bought the Gondola Inn, renovated it, and reopened it that year. Knapp later retired from the partnership.

(George D’Alessandro and Charlie Knapp, Nov. 7, 1948, Fort Myers News-Press)

D’Alessandro sold the restaurant in 1965, and it changed names and concepts several times after. The building burned down in 1979.

Enjoy the Gondola Inn’s recipe for Shrimp en Casserole from The Fort Myers Cook Book (Lee Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, 1951)