There’s a family restaurant on South Parkway in Memphis that has been feeding the city since 1923. It’s called Coletta’s, and the people who run it say it was home to Elvis Presley’s favorite pizza.
But if you’re guessing pepperoni or sausage, keep guessing.
The story starts long before Elvis. Emil and Candida Coletta opened the business in 1923 as a soda fountain and ice cream shop. In the 1940s their son, Horest, took it over. Today Horest’s son Jerry Coletta and Jerry’s family run the place, so it has stayed in the same family the whole time. Coletta’s still draws curious eaters, like the food reviewer in this video who stopped in to give it a try.
A food reviewer tries Coletta’s in Memphis
After World War II, Horest put pizza on the menu. There was just one problem. Pizza was still new to Memphis, and people didn’t know what to make of it. At first, it didn’t sell.
So Horest got creative.
The family says that around 1950 he came up with an idea to win over the locals. If Memphis wasn’t sure about pizza, maybe it would try pizza made with something it already loved.
He made it with barbecue.
The recipe Coletta’s shared with Food Network for “BBQ with Bobby Flay” starts with the restaurant’s own barbecue sauce, then mozzarella and a little cheddar, topped with chopped pork shoulder barbecue. Jerry says the pork shoulders slow-cook for eight hours. As his son Stephen put it in Memphis magazine, “It was an immediate hit.”
This short video from PMQ Pizza, a magazine for the pizza business, looks back at Coletta’s long history, and it’s worth a watch before you hear where Elvis comes in.
A look at Coletta’s, the Memphis family restaurant behind the pizza
The family says the barbecue pizza “was Elvis’ favorite,” and Jerry told the Memphis Flyer that “The King dined on barbecue pizza at Coletta’s on South Parkway.”
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Elvis did make a few visits. But showing up in person could cause a scene, so according to Memphis magazine he usually sent Priscilla or a friend to pick up boxes of pizza instead.
That’s where one of the sweetest details comes in. The Memphis Flyer wrote that “Priscilla Presley, who likes Coletta’s lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs, used to pick up barbecue pizzas to-go.”
Jerry remembers Elvis’s group coming in every week, “bringing barbecue pizzas back to Graceland.” As he told PMQ Pizza earlier this year, “One of our most famous customers was Elvis, back in the ’70s.” Coletta’s also turns up in this pizza adventure video from PMQ Pizza, if you’d like one more look at the place.
Coletta’s in a PMQ Pizza adventure video
There’s even a fun little footnote about the bill. “We’d just keep a running tab,” Stephen told Memphis magazine, “and Colonel Parker would come in and take care of it.” Colonel Parker was Elvis’s manager.
The Elvis connection is still part of the place today. Fans sit at what PMQ calls “Elvis’ table” and look at the photos of Elvis on the walls, and one room is known as the Elvis Room. Coletta’s closed its newer Appling Road location this summer, but the original on South Parkway is still open. ABC24 Memphis covered the Appling Road closing in this news report.
A Memphis TV news report on the Appling Road closing
“The place on Parkway, we have that Elvis connection,” Jerry told the Daily Memphian.
And the pizza that started it all? “Barbecue pizza remains our signature item today,” Jerry told the Memphis Flyer.