‘Professor’ Giovanni Ferro, founder of Amore e Amore, leaves legacy of love
Giovanni Ferro, the co-founder of Inman Park Italian restaurant Amore e Amore, was a passionate man.
“Food and music and sports were the rhythms that drove Giovanni’s life. He couldn’t live without any of them,” said Gale Parker, fellow co-owner of Amore e Amore.
That passion drove him to envision a future for the little Italian restaurant at 467 N. Highland Ave. in Inman Park long before it became the celebrated neighborhood restaurant it is today.
Ferro and Parker stewarded Il Localino through 20 years of a changing city. Then, they ushered its evolution, Amore e Amore, through the tribulations of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, Parker is left to guide the restaurant through the death of one of its most beloved keepers.
Ferro died on Feb. 11. Parker said Ferro never fully recovered after several bouts of COVID-19, and he left Atlanta to live in Florida about two years ago, in part because being so close to the restaurant — but unable to work there — was unthinkable to him.
Ferro was born in Venice, Italy. His father, an opera singer, wanted him to move to America more than anything, Parker said. To him, it represented a land of opportunity after growing up in post-World War II Italy.
Ferro’s mother owned a restaurant, and after his father’s opera performances, he would bring dozens of friends over, waking her up to prepare food for everyone.
Ferro first moved from Italy to Canada, Parker said, where he played soccer briefly before continuing on to the U.S. He worked in restaurants in New York City and Miami before relocating to Atlanta in what Parker guessed was the late ‘80s, where he opened Asti Trattoria in Buckhead with a business partner.
Parker and Ferro’s 28-year love story began at Asti with a phone call.
Parker, a native New Yorker, worked in marketing when a friend urged her to check out Asti to see if she could help their business. When she arrived, the restaurant partner handed her the phone to speak with Ferro.
“If you’ve ever watched an old Italian movie, and the lead character has this romantic, fabulous Italian accent — it was like love at first listen,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, her voice full of that same awe, as if it happened only a few months ago. “He was so full of that Old World — he called me darling and he called me by my last name, Ms. Parker.”
Their romance was a whirlwind, she said. They’d both had separate lives before meeting, with their own respective children. Parker was 45 years old by the time they got together, and “there was no denying” the feelings they had for each other.
Ferro asked her to join him at the restaurant, and their lives have been entangled ever since.
They worked together at Asti for several years before deciding to retire and travel. But that life was too boring for Ferro, Parker said, leading her paramour to buy Il Localino in Inman Park out of the blue.
“Well, I was so angry,” Parker said, her laughter echoing through the phone. Ferro may not have enjoyed retirement, but she certainly did.
In those first few weeks after buying the restaurant, Il Localino didn’t even have a menu. Parker would ask every customer who came in what they wanted to eat, and if they had the ingredients, that’s what they’d make.
John Dwyer was one of the first customers to visit the restaurant. He ventured in one day to ask if they’d be willing to sponsor an event at his daughter’s preschool. They said yes without hesitation, even though they weren’t slated to open for two more weeks.
Ferro and Parker showed up with platters of appetizers, loaves of bread and bottles of wine for that preschool event, and ever since, Dwyer and his family have been loyal customers. He would bring his kids to the restaurant dressed in their pajamas and they’d eat a pizza Ferro made especially for them, then fall asleep in their seats while their parents dined.
“You’re never gonna have another Giovanni in the neighborhood,” he said.
Parker’s daughter, Marni Schnapper, was his biggest fan from the beginning, Schnapper chimed in on the phone. She thought he was the funniest, most interesting person, and Ferro wanted her to know everything about the restaurant.
“I was just so in for what he was in for, and I loved it,” she said.
She’d make garlic butter and fried eggplants with him, and when she was older and living in Las Vegas, Ferro would sit beside her at the sportsbooks and send her off to place his bets.
Ferro also harbored a deep love for horses. Every vacation they took revolved around horse racing, Parker said.
“There was never a horse that he couldn’t tell you the mother, the father, the grandmother, the grandfather, the races it won, who won, who lost,” she said. Remembering all of those facts kept him young, Parker added.
Ferro loved soccer, too, especially women’s soccer. And music moved with him throughout his life — he would leave music playing whenever he left the house so that he would never return to a quiet home. He was adamant about clapping for every singer he heard perform, even if they weren’t particularly good, purely because of the bravery it took to bare that part of one’s soul. His “theme song,” Parker recalled, was “Al Di Là,” and he would sing it around her frequently.
But his passionate nature went in both directions.
“When he blew it was like (Vesuvius), you could hear it on every channel,” Parker said with a laugh. “His lows were as voluminous as his highs were. But I don’t believe there’s any great artist who could get high enough without getting low enough. The difference with Gio is the minute he let it out, it was over.”
He could be a difficult man, she said, and he refused to be wrong.
Azedine “Camillo” Amarouche, the general manager at Amore e Amore, learned that things had to run Ferro’s way when he started working at the restaurant more than a decade ago.
“He had his way to do things, so you just have to follow it,” he said.
About 16 years ago, while living across the street from Il Localino, Amarouche walked over in search of a job. Amarouche had recently immigrated to the U.S. from Algeria and could only speak French at first, but fortunately Ferro spoke it, too. Ferro had Amarouche get changed and come back to start working that same day.
“He took me as a family member, because I came here as an immigrant, I (didn’t) know nobody here to start with, until he took me in,” Amarouche said. “Inside, it’s about work, but outside it’s like a family.”
During those 16 years, they would have lunch together often, and Ferro called him every single day, even after he moved to Florida.
Ferro was at the restaurant seven days a week, open to close. He went table-to-table each night, Amarouche said, telling stories and asking after customers.
Ferro taught Amarouche everything about the restaurant, but the most important thing he learned from the restaurateur is that “anybody that walks in from the door has to be treated the same way. It doesn’t matter where they came from,” he said.
Ferro had lessons to teach everyone, about the restaurant and life in general, Amarouche said. Hence the nickname Professor.
In 2021, Il Localino abruptly closed. When the community made its love and support of Il Localino known, Ferro was determined to bring it back.
Parker had her reservations at first; reopening meant starting over, in some ways. It was a costly decision, one that would have them working for many hours a day and giving everything they had all over again. But the people of Inman Park were not ready to say goodbye.
“Giovanni never quit anything, and although I can’t say that over my lifetime, I learned that skill from him,” Parker said.
Amore e Amore continued in Il Localino’s place, and Ferro and Parker celebrated 25 years of operation on Oct. 21.
In recent years, after several bouts of COVID-19, Ferro grew sicker, until he finally left Atlanta in 2023 to live in Florida, where he would at least be far enough from the restaurant that it wouldn’t pull at him quite so much, Parker said. She also retreated to Florida to take care of him, and she barely left his side in his final years.
To the very end, even when he was in pain, he wouldn’t admit it to Parker. He said that, as long as he had her, he would “always be young,” she said. “He’s a man that never got old.”
Parker prefers not to say how old Ferro was. He always saw himself as young, and she doesn’t want to change that perception of him.
When asked by a reporter what his age was when he died, she said “younger than springtime.”
Amore e Amore will live on through Parker, her daughter and Amarouche. It remains a steadfast piece of Atlanta’s dining landscape, even though Giovanni Ferro is no longer there to greet each customer.
“Because Gio was an irresistible force of nature, greatness followed him everywhere he went,” Parker said.
A celebration of Ferro’s life will be held this spring at Amore e Amore. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
About the Author
Olivia Wakim is a digital content producer on the food and dining team. She joined the AJC as an intern in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia with a journalism degree. While in school, she reported for The Red & Black, Grady Newsource and the Marietta Daily Journal.
