The Carmelo’s team is headed even further south into Kentucky with their next restaurant.
Billy Grise and Mitch Arens, the co-owners of the Italian restaurant that’s taken Covington by storm since it opened in November 2024, are opening an American chop house in Fort Wright, Kentucky.
The location of the new restaurant is the building the former Fort Wright Frisch’s Big Boy occupied on 20 Kyles Lane until it moved to Orphanage Road in August.
“Building restaurants for the people and community around us is what we love doing,” Grise said. “We’re channeling old-school hospitality in a historic building, and giving the people of Fort Wright a place to escape to again.”
Carmelo’s has already drawn national acclaim since it opened; in January, USA Today readers voted it the second-best new restaurant in the United States.
Grise named Carmelo’s for his great-grandfather Carmelo Caserta, a Sicilian immigrant who ran a neighborhood tavern and grocery. Arens, the chef and co-owner, founded the private chef company Southernly and has worked in kitchens for more than 20 years.
The new restaurant is a “chop house,” which is slightly different from a steakhouse. The term originated in Britain in 1690 and referred to casual restaurants serving all sorts of meat (not just steak) where men would stop in for a quick bite after work. While the two haven’t decided on a name for the new place yet, they hope to evoke a similar feeling when the restaurant opens.
“I grew up in a large family in Northern Kentucky. For me dinner was a table full of food and a room filled with everyone I love,” Arens said. “That’s what we want to re-create here. Comfort food you recognize before you taste it, that hopefully brings back memories of the potlucks, the cookouts, and family celebrations so many of us experienced during our childhood.”
The new spot will seat 160 people and feature an outdoor patio. The stretch through Fort Wright where the restaurant will be located was once known as the Gourmet Strip for the restaurants that lined it, so Grise and Arens will be drawing on both that and the history of Dixie Highway for the restaurant’s overall design.
For more information on Carmelo’s, visit the restaurant’s official website.
