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Red Gravy.  Just the name evokes images of an Italian mamma, dishing up huge platters of spaghetti with juicy meatballs, oozing cheese and smothered in-tomato sauce.  Well, if you find yourself in New Orleans’ Central Business District/French Quarter neighborhood at 125 Camp St., that’s exactly what you’ll get.

Red Gravy Café is a passion project of a self-described “Little Italian Girl from Northern New Jersey,” Roseann Melisi Rostoker.  They dish up daily breakfast and lunch specials that will take you back to the Italian restaurant you went to on your first date with your high school boyfriend or girlfriend– complete with red checkered tablecloths and that ubiquitous wicker-covered bottle of Chianti.  There’s a full bar, and with every dish, just about, you can get – not egg rolls – but a meatball.  For example, the breakfast dish “Nancy,” (all the dishes on the menu are named after Roseann’s friends or family members), features eggs your way, mozzarella, and a MEATBALL!  At lunch, you might want to try the “Mark,” with red gravy, meatballs and mozzarella.  You can even get a meatball with your salad.  But not to worry, there are homemade pasta dishes like spaghetti carbonara, or with clam sauce, that still make you think you’re back in Mamma’s kitchen.

And motherly, chatty Roseann is also doing something special this 2013 holiday season that’s been getting a lot of local and national press: the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a traditional Sicilian Christmas feast that involves seven dishes including seafood.   Make sure you bring plenty of friends as Roseann says, “Please come and eat, I always make too much.”