Mother/Daughter Team Up To Create Italian Restaurant
A mother-daughter duo are keeping it all in the family with their new restaurant Ve’Gyarne Pasta Garden.
“It’s 99.9 percent family owned and operated,” manager Vickie Green said.
This quaint Italian restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Street, with its dim lighting, strings of white lights, bubbling fountains and reservation-only nooks, has been packed since its opening last Saturday, Green said.
The idea to open the restaurant was spearheaded by Engwin Green, Vickie and Edwin Green’s daughter.
Engwin was attending Texas Southern University in Houston as a business major when she began talking to her mother about opening a restaurant.
“My mom thought it was something we should go in to,” Engwin said.
Vickie, who used to own a seafood and pasta restaurant across the street, is in charge of the cooking, while Engwin tackles the rest.
“She’s the brains of it all, I’m just the cook,” Vickie said.
The mother-daughter team began with just a shell of a building.
“We built from the floor up,” Vickie said.
In about four months, they added tables and chairs, the kitchen, the check out counter, a small stage and all the décor.
“The décor was pretty much me,” Engwin said.
The staff of five is mostly family members and the Greens prefer it that way.
“I think family is nice to work with, they’re easy to cooperate with, everybody has the same vision, there’s no backstabbing,” Engwin said. “Everything is positive when you have family (working together.)”
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