In July of 2021, Michelle Smith walked into to a portion of Savannah’s culinary history with the intent of bringing it back to life. Desposito’s Seafood held a place in the heart and minds of a significant portion of Savannah’s population for decades. It was equal parts restaurant, gathering place and meeting space. Once upon a time, the regulars would pile in to Desposito’s to watch NASCAR races on a tiny television sitting at the end of the bar. The beer was cold, so they kept coming back.

Once upon a time, Desposito’s didn’t offer any fried foods. Didn’t offer 8 beers on tap and certainly didn’t offer an exceptional shrimp scampi. It just wasn’t that kind of place. While there will be plenty of room for “Once upon a time” at the new Desposito’s, a lot of it will be hanging on the walls. Their original recipes are still in play, but the menu is going to roughly double in size. For the many that use to frequent this space, this will be an improved and certainly ‘new’ dining experience.

We figured it would be best to hear it from the lady in charge herself. My conversation with Michelle Smith, Managing Partner at Desposito’s. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

JB: They say it’s always the last 2% of the process that is the hardest part of opening a restaurant. Is that true?

MS: Yes. Absolutely. Just the waiting on everyone else. And it’s frustrating because you can’t push anything. You can’t push the State. They don’t care that you are ready to open. You know people that haven’t been in this business definitely don’t understand that.

JB: The average person that’s coming here for fried shrimp doesn’t care about any of that.

MS: No. They just want to know when we are opening. (laughs). And I get it.

JB: What was the first day that you came in here to start all of this?

MS: We started with the first architectural drawings and discussions 2 years ago exactly. (July 2021). But we didn’t actually pour any concrete until June of 2022. And I wouldn’t remember that except that it just popped up on my memories on social media. It seems soooo long ago.

JB: The original plan if I recall was to re-do what was already here, right?

MS: It was, but we were always going to add a patio. Then we did a 2nd set of drawings to expand the kitchen and we cut down the patio, to kind of equal out.

JB: Are you from Savannah?

MS: I’m from Ludowici originally.

JB: So do you have any recollection of this history of this place?

MS: Only from spending time with the past owners. I spent 3 months with the previous owner (David) and heard all the things. All the stories and all the recipes. He shared all the things that he loved, all the things that he hated. All of his bar tales for sure.

JB: Did it strike a chord with you that this was more than just another restaurant opening?

MS: Absolutely. Just listening to stories about him growing up. Talking about certain tables where he sat for his family meal. How Carlo Desposito didn’t like kids. How he wasn’t loud when he was in here. Just hearing some of the background of like the mobsters that came in. He says they were planning the asassination of Fidel Castro here. Like it’s insane. I don’t know if it’s tales or if it’s true. The story did happen. You can google it You can find it. A book was written about it. There are so many passed things in here.

Literally, every person I speak to from the age of like 60 to 95 has told me “I came here on my first date!” or “That was my favorite place to go every weekend.” There are so many stories. Any person that age that wants to share with me, I am here to listen. Just so I can try to bring back some of those old stories.

JB: I’ve heard a lot of that as well, obviously. And me, from a distance, has been hand wringing for you guys a little bit. How do you make those people happy but still run a forward thinking modern restaurant?

MS: That will be hard. For sure. But I think it’s both ways. I think for some, there will be the ‘it wasn’t broken, why did you fix it?’ kinda thing. But it’s because they haven’t been here in years. And they only think of it the way it was. They didn’t see the condition the building was in. As a matter of fact, we tried to save the actual original building, but only 6 boards are left from the original building. When we tore them off the walls, they were almost all ruined from termites. We had to completely re-do the ceiling and the roof. Way more than we expected, for sure. Every day in the beginning there was something. We were way over budget.

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JB: How many items were on the original menu?

MS: About 15. No descriptions for sure, so it was small. The new one will be about double that size. For starters, there were no fried foods, so we’ve added that. Then on top of that, we’ve added a larger amount of appetizers and shared items.

JB: I was told 50 seats outside at the bar?

MS: Yeah, there isn’t a lot of table space inside. The largest group we could handle would be maybe 25 in the front room.

JB: What excites you the most about this?

MS: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to love history even more. I’ve loved to hear the stories. I also loved hospitality my whole life. I started washing dishes when I was 12. I enjoy meeting new people and serving good food. Our menu is going to be simple and priced where people could feel like they can come here multiple times a week. Not a once a month thing that will break you. Yeah, we have some costly items for sure, it’s seafood. We have a platter that’s $30-40, but it’s shareable.

You can come here and get a beer and an oyster po’ boy for 20 bucks. I think that’s a do-able amount. You can’t go to some fast food places for that amount.

JB: How many of the original menu items will be here now?

MS: All of them.

JB: How are you going to handle crowd control at the beginning? You could fill this place up week one multiple times. Are you going to ease your way into it with seatings?

MS: Yes. I was going to do reservations at first. But we are not. We have people stopping by every day, so we will serve them. We will just handle it as they come in.

JB: You know people are going to show up here looking things to bitch about, right?

MS: 100 percent. They are already doing it now on social media and we aren’t even open yet. I totally get it already. (laughter)

JB: I’m going to publish this! (laughter). I get a lot of it, I can only imagine you once the bullets start flying here.

MS: Yeah, I already told some of my friends, I’m going to take a hiatus from Facebook for a little bit when we open because it hurts your feelings!

JB: Of course it does!

MS: You get here, you are trying to do your best day and night. Nothing is going to be perfect. It is just not going to be perfect at the beginning. We know that. But we definitely know that we are putting as much as we can into it to make it as good as it used to be for those that are looking for that while also offering a new experience at the whole neighborhood and the whole Town of Thunderbolt can be proud of.

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