Adelmo’s Ristorante is expected to serve its last supper at its current Dallas location, at Inwood Road and Lovers Lane, in late December 2025.
The 36-year-old family-owned restaurant is looking for a new location to move the restaurant. Owner Adelmo Banchetti told The Dallas Morning News his rent was expected to nearly double if he were to keep the Italian restaurant at Dallas’ Inwood Village.
Banchetti said he feels loyal to the families his restaurant has served for 36 years, first at Cole Avenue and Knox Street for more than a quarter-century, and then at Inwood Road and Lovers Lane for a decade.
“We don’t want to leave our customers,” Banchetti said. “They don’t want to leave us.”
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Adelmo Banchetti opened Adelmo’s Ristorante in Dallas in 1989. He has a lovable catchphrase: “telegraph, telephone, tell Adelmo.”
David Woo / The Dallas Morning News
Banchetti, who was born and raised in Florence, Italy, is a natural host. Decades ago, he worked on cruise ships overseas with fellow Italian restaurateur Alberto Lombardi, who now owns Dallas restaurants Toulouse, Taverna, Bistro 31 and many others. Banchetti was assistant maître d’ at The Mansion and maître d’at the Pyramid Room at the Fairmont. He opened his own restaurant after what he describes as a “misunderstanding”: staffers were asked to learn a new computer system at the Fairmont, and Banchetti thought he heard his manager say she wouldn’t help them learn it — though she’d said the opposite.
“I said, ‘I can be my own boss so no one can tell me what to do,’” Banchetti recalls. So he got a lease near Knox Street and opened a bistro with his name on it.
Over nearly 40 years, the recipes for Adelmo’s osso buco and lasagna have remained the same, the owner said. The old-school service and warm family atmosphere are still intact, too.
“But the habits of the people have changed a little bit,” Banchetti said. So has his attitude toward dishes that seem like Americanized versions of the Italian food he grew up eating.
Like garlic bread.
“I said, ‘Why would I have to put on the table something that stinks like garlic bread?’” he said.
“But now I say, ‘You want it? [Will] you pay for it? You get it.’”
Customers also requested meatballs (“a great dish, but an immigrant dish”) and fettuccine alfredo (“a disgrace”). He added both, plus gluten-free pasta.
The fettuccine alfredo, specifically, “sells like crazy,” he said.
Diners rarely say “no” to dessert: cannoli, tiramisu, flourless chocolate cake and crème brûlée. Customers celebrating a birthday or an anniversary are treated to bread pudding with brandy caramel sauce.
The Banchettis haven’t found a new place to move Adelmo’s yet. They’re looking in University Park, Highland Park and near Love Field.
“We are blessed in many ways,” Banchetti said as he considers his last few months near Devonshire in Dallas. “The only thing is, we hope to find a place not too far, not too big, where we can be active in making people happy.”
Adelmo’s Ristorante is at 5450 W. Lovers Lane, Dallas. Closed Mondays. The restaurant is expected to remain open at its current location until late December 2025.