How Webb Custom Kitchen Helped Spark Downtown Gastonia’s Revival
Owner Jim Morasso hopes to open two more establishments near the successful restaurant this year
When local restaurateur and real estate developer Jim Morasso received a call from a friend in 2015 suggesting he check out a prime space that had just opened up for a new restaurant in downtown Gastonia, he didn’t have much to go on.
Living in Fort Mill and opening restaurants in Mooresville, Denver and Charlotte, Morasso had moved around the Charlotte metro area a good bit through his career, but Gastonia remained a mystery.
“I had never been in Gastonia. I’d just drive by it on 85,” he recalled. “I’ve lived here in this area for 45 years and all I’d heard was the stuff people say about Gastonia.”
And what people said was not always great. In fact, the story behind the space he agreed to check out was just another example of how the Gaston County seat got a bad rap.
In March 2015, news broke that the city had abruptly terminated restaurateur Nick LaVecchia’s lease at Nick’s Steak and Taphouse, which he had opened in the historic Webb Theater building in 2011, after LaVecchia’s wife was arrested for selling cocaine to a police informant at an undisclosed downtown location.
The idea that one of downtown Gastonia’s historic gems may have been turned into a drug den was a stain on the city’s name. However, upon taking up his friend’s suggestion and going to see the space, Morasso immediately saw the potential.
“When I came down here, I was like, ‘Look at this place! There are some pretty fascinating buildings,” he recalled.
From outsider to investor: discovering downtown Gastonia’s potential
The Webb Theater opened in 1927, one of multiple movie theaters in the downtown area of the bustling mill town. The building was designed by Hugh White, who also designed City Hall across the street and the nearby Citizens National Bank and Standard Hardware buildings.
Morasso hatched an idea to capitalize on the history of the building and the area. After winning out in a competitive bid process to take over the establishment, he got to work on Webb Custom Kitchen, a steakhouse rooted in the history of Gastonia.
Having marked 10 years in business on Jan. 13, Webb Custom Kitchen has become a community hub while serving more than 2 million guests over a decade.
It’s garnered numerous accolades along the way, including a spot on OpenTable’s Top 100 Most Romantic Restaurants in America, Yelp’s Top 25 Steakhouses in the US and more.
But that’s just the beginning. Morasso has been investing his profits from Webb Custom Kitchen back into new projects that he hopes can help fully revitalize downtown Gastonia. This year, he plans to open The Fed, a new restaurant located inside the former Citizens National Bank building on West Main Avenue.
Above that in the same building, Morasso, who chairs the Gaston Business Association, plans to launch The Exchange, a private club for local business owners of all stripes — seasoned or aspiring — to come together and trade ideas to help build Gastonia’s economy and standing in the area.
“There needs to be more around,” he said. “That’s what our goal is; if you don’t want food now, why are you downtown? You either need a bail bondsman or a lawyer. So how do we change that?”
Bringing back the Webb Theater’s history
One does not walk into Webb Custom Kitchen without knowing that it was once a movie theater, and according to Morasso, that was the point.
“Our goal was, how do we do two things: How do we turn this restaurant into a little museum of its past and also a museum of the city’s past? And that’s what we’ve attempted to do,” Morasso told me on a recent visit.
Passing under the marquee to enter the restaurant, a wine room behind large glass windows right up front serves as a subtle nod to the concession stand that once stood there. One of the theater’s original projectors stands tall to the right of the host’s station.
Past the bar, a large projector screen plays Turner Classic Movies throughout the day. The ceiling of the establishment has been rounded in an arch design so as to serve for the best possible acoustics — not to amplify the music but regulate it.
The interior was built to stop sound from bouncing around the room. The movies are kept on mute, as are the three TVs at the bar. A soft soundtrack plays throughout the room as the team of cooks and servers operates in a fully open kitchen right in front of the dining room.
The staff operates through a series of hand motions rather than yelling at one another. The cooking of the food is the only noise coming from the kitchen.
“How many times do you go into a restaurant and say, ‘Oh my God, it’s so loud, I can’t even talk to my guests,” asks Morasso. “Our feeling about being in our restaurant, the reason why we don’t have the sound playing on the movie, I want you to talk to your partner, the person you’re here with.”
Subtle, tasteful nods to the building’s history are hidden throughout the building. Two window-shaped lights that look like otherwise unremarkable modern designs in the dining room unveil a unique history upon closer examination.
While carrying out renovations in 2015, Morasso came across the actual film reels for two movies: Ivanhoe (1952) and The Peking Medallion (1967). He sliced the reels up and placed them next to each other in columns, then backlit them to create the soothing lights. He did the same in the upstairs dining area, where a glowing Webb Theater sign was created using original letters rescued from the basement of a local man who had passed away.
In another dining room upstairs, large-scale historic photos show downtown Gastonia as it was in the early-20th century. One depicts dozens of mill children standing behind a pile of goods they had compiled during a scrap drive to support the war effort in the 1940s. In the photo, two children peek out from a window that’s located just feet away from where the print hangs now.
Hugh White’s original blueprints for the building hang on another wall in the same room, relics that Morasso said actually came in handy during the renovation process.
Morasso has a few of the classic movie posters from the original business in storage, but he thought the design of Webb Custom Kitchen should be more cerebral.
“You’ve got to be able to use your brain more than just simply say, ‘Here’s a picture.’”
A Produce Partnership Rooted in Community
Save for its signature porterhouse steaks, some best-sellers on the Webb Custom Kitchen menu include the French Connection, shaved roast beef on a French baguette with an au jus dip; the Standard Hardware burger, heaped with toppings that include grilled portobellos, garlic-jalapeno pickles, Emmenthaler Swiss cheese, and dijonnaise.
For dinner, the Southern-style meatloaf dish has become such a hit that it will soon be added to the lunch menu.
Chef Lizz Giacomucci said she’s surprised herself with the way she’s taken to Southern-style cooking so naturally, as she didn’t grow up with it.
She enjoys experimenting with Webb’s rotating menu and on special events, such as New Year’s Eve when she served Nashville hot frog legs, a surprise hit.
“I’m not Southern, but people love my collard greens and my meatloafs, that’s Southern style, things like that,” she told me. “So I think I’ve just adapted to that through living in the South for as long as I have.”
She’s also a master at Italian cooking, insisted Morasso, who hopes to soon launch a new venture helmed by Giacomucci to capitalize on that style.
For salads and most other produce in the restaurant, Webb Custom Kitchen partners with Webb Street School, which serves young people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities.
The school runs an aquaponics program in partnership with Charlotte-based nonprofit 100 Gardens that teaches vocational and life skills to students, who use a sustainable system to grow fish (tilapia) and leafy greens (like lettuce) for local restaurants and markets.
When Morasso learned that the school’s teachers were selling the school’s excess produce at farmers’ markets on their own time over the weekends, he told them Webb Custom Kitchen would buy anything they had available at the end of a given week.
With history dating back to 1949, Webb Street School was not related to Webb Custom Kitchen at the start, but it has turned into one of Morasso’s deepest passions.
“It fills my eyes full of tears,” he said of his experience working with the school. “I told them I would buy everything that they don’t sell. It got to a point where we’re just about buying everything they sell. I don’t even care if I use all of it. I just want to keep this thing alive.”
Morasso is involved in other community work, partnering with longtime Gastonia anti-homelessness warrior Sharon Funderburk on projects and running a program through his own kitchen in which he employs folks struggling with addiction and mental illness.
It’s all part of the circle of support he wants to cultivate as he attempts to help revitalize downtown Gastonia into a destination for both residents of the city and folks from the area.
“I have an inner guiding principle that I’ve always had: We worry about our community, we take care of our community, but it’s also our purveyor,” Morasso shared. “My goal is more than to generate a profit for my wallet.
My goal is not to die with the most money. The legacy comes from the creation of a streetscape, of a downtown, and revitalizing downtown. That’s where my passion is.”
