Roz & Rocco’s, a new BYOB in Delco, is a tribute to the owners’ fathers

Christine Nigro grew up in Broomall and set out on a restaurant-management career that started at the Four Seasons when it was on Logan Circle and led to Atlantic City, California, and New York City.

At Atlantic Grill at Lincoln Center, she met Scott Brayton, a Kentucky native who at 30 had career-changed from insurance to restaurants. They fell in love, got married, and had two daughters. She transitioned to consulting, and then came the pandemic.

“That kind of eliminated the need for restaurant consulting,” Nigro said.

With the goal of opening their own restaurant, they moved to the Philadelphia suburbs. Brayton, now 41, whose last job was general manager of Avra Madison at Rockefeller Center, started looking for spaces to lease. “He found one — and it was like a mile from where I grew up,” Nigro, 39, said.

Roz & Rocco’s, a cheery, homey BYOB that opened over the summer in a strip mall at 2904 West Chester Pike in Broomall, is named after their fathers, who factor into their love story. “His father [Roswell] passed away in 2007,” she said. “Very young. He was a marathon runner, who died of a heart attack on a treadmill. My father [Rocco] passed away unexpectedly in 2014, and that sort of sparked our friendship, and that really brought us together.”

The restaurant, festooned with a frame shop’s worth of personal photos, nods strongly to Nigro’s Italian American family, who all lived in South Philadelphia rowhouses, “just like the stereotype,” she said.

“Bazillions of cousins would get together all the time and have regular dinners of 40 people. That was my whole life, and my grandmothers were the quintessential Italian grandmothers. I swear boyfriends of mine stayed with me just so they could continue to go to my grandmas’ for Sunday dinner. So the idea was to bottle that up and make that for everybody.”

Chef Ned Maddock, last at White Dog Cafe’s locations in Wayne and Glen Mills after a Center City turn at P.J. Clarke’s, turns out an Italianesque menu — that is, in addition to the salads, meatballs, chicken Parm, and house-made pastas, there’s a section of grilled items (fish, chicken, steak, cauliflower, shrimp, served a la carte with a sauce).

House-made bread finds its way into the toasts (a non-South Philly twist to the menu), to the sandwiches, and even to the soups, which include a riff on French onion: a thick tomato soup topped with a crouton and melted cheese. Figure on $30 to $40 per person for dinner.

Maddock, Brayton, and Nigro collaborated on the signature garlic bread, baked in a crock and coming out like a giant, steaming bun, that just about everyone orders. There are some big-city touches, including lemons branded with the restaurant name.

Brunch/lunch menus are on from noon to 4 p.m., followed by a dinner menu.

Nigro said the transition from 200-seat restaurants to a 60-seat BYOB in the suburbs has been a welcome change. “When you run a restaurant in New York, you serve literally thousands of people a night,” she said. “I talk to people all the time, but I don’t know any of them. I see them for their one meal and that’s it. We have maybe a handful of regulars.

“What’s been great about this restaurant is every night, there’s like five or six tables I know,” she said. “That was my kindergarten teacher or someone who worked at the church I went to. It’s just a totally different feel. You almost think it’s too picturesque to be true.”