If you have fond memories of Bisotti’s Drive-in Restaurant in Aberdeen, Ohio, and have a hankering for some of the food served there, this is your chance.
Maxine Bisotti, widow of the late Geno Bisotti, will spend all day Friday making up a restaurant-sized batch of the spaghetti and sauce once served in the family-owned and operated restaurant.
The occasion is in support of the Aberdeen Concerned Citizens organization, which has been working since its inception to improve the quality of life for the town’s citizens.
The spaghetti sauce Maxine will create includes 15 pounds of ground beef, two bags of yellow onions, tomato sauce and paste and the family’s secret seasonings. All that sauce will be served over no less than 24 pounds of spaghetti noodles.
This is the third year Maxine has made the spaghetti sauce for the benefit. Her day will begin at 11 a.m., and will continue until the last bit of food is served. She will be helped in the kitchen by Marita Lang, who will assist with the constant stirring of the sauce, which is a key to its success.
“I move in Friday at 11 o’clock,” Maxine said.
“It’s all Max’s magic,” said Shari Stafford, Bisotti family friend and member of the Aberdeen Concerned Citizens.
But for Maxine, spending the day cooking is her way of paying everyone back for welcoming the Bisotti family to the area in the early 1960s.
Having been a frequent customer of the wildly popular restaurant in the 1970s, which was a hangout for teenagers, I didn’t know how or why the Bisotti family settled in Aberdeen. I just knew they did, and their restaurant was a fun place to meet friends, celebrate a basketball victory, or have a good family dinner.
In 1952, Geno Bisotti left Harlen County (Kentucky) for Kenosha, Wisc., after the mine fields in Harlan County were playing out, according to Maxine.
Other members of the Bisotti family, which immigrated to America from Italy a generation before, had also relocated to Wisconsin for work.
Maxine said Geno found a job, and it wasn’t long before his brothers, Valentino, Albert and Dino also moved to Kenosha.
Then as fate would have it, the auto manufacturing plant was being relocated oversees around 1960, and the four brothers decided they wanted to open a restaurant.
Since the family has migrated to Kentucky after reaching America, the brothers decided Lexington would be a good place to start looking for a restaurant. That’s when they met the owner of a Jerry’s Restaurant franchise, who had a location in Aberdeen.
“We had never heard of Aberdeen, Ohio,” Maxine said of the decision to move to the small community.
Move they did in 1962, when they began operation of the Jerry’s location. In 1968, the family took full ownership of the restaurant and moved away from the Jerry’s franchise. The new name was Bisotti’s Drive-in Restaurant.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
“If you had $4 and a car, you could eat all night,” Maxine said of the teenagers that drove around the restaurant.
In her own words, Maxine said “the people accepted us, the people in the area are so friendly. It was a great time over the years. Now it’s been 19 years since we closed, we miss the people in the Aberdeen-Maysville area. There is not a time we go shopping that someone says “when are you going to open Bisotti’s back again?”
Staying in touch with the people who patronized the family-owned and operated restaurant is one of the reasons Maxine has become involved with the Aberdeen Concerned Citizens.
She wants families to have a nice place to take their children to play; for visitors to have a clean and safe boat dock; and for future generations to have memories of growing up like she and her family did, along with thousands of others who supported Bisotti’s and recall those times with fondness.
“I do it with love because I really care,” she said.
The Aberdeen Concerned Citizens Spaghetti Dinner is Friday, Nov. 6, from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Aberdeen Community Center on Budig Drive.
The dinner consists of the Bisotti’s signature spaghetti and sauce, Pasquales’ garlic bread, a tossed salad, beverage and dessert.
Proceeds from the event support activities funded by ACC. Past projects have included new Christmas decorations for the village, patriotic banners, new grills and tables at the Aberdeen Park, upkeep and repairs to the Aberdeen softball fields, new playground equipment at the park, maintenance of the bike/walking path on U.S. 52 and the annual lighting of the village Christmas tree.
An upcoming project of ACC is the installation of playground equipment for children with neurological developmental disorders, such as autism. To date, a $10,500 grant has been secured from the Charles and Mary Elizabeth Scripps Foundation for the project in memory of long-time Aberdeen resident, the late Zoe Parker Chamness.
From 1968 to 1996, Bisotti’s Restaurant in Aberdeen, Ohio was a favorite hangout of teenagers and families alike.
Bisotti’s Restaurant was founded by brothers Geno, Valentino, Albert and Dino Bisotti.
