When 16-year-old Frances began washing dishes and serving customers at a neighbourhood eatery along the St. Joseph River in South Bend, Indiana, she earned just five cents a day. A century later, the same restaurant is still in her family, serving its famous hand-rolled meatballs and red sauce that is simmered for two days. Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026, the Sunny Italy Cafe is South Bend’s oldest operating restaurant, with Frances’s daughter now running the kitchen and dining room. According to reporting by Bluewater Healthy Living and an archival feature from Yahoo News, the restaurant’s story began in 1926 when Anthony and Rose Vumbaca opened a cafe at 601 North Niles Avenue, originally called the North Niles Avenue Cafe. Frances, who lived across the street, started working there soon after it opened to help support her family. In 1940, her parents, Jimmy and Josie Bamber, bought the business from the Vumbacas and officially renamed it the Sunny Italy Cafe. Even after the name changed, generations of local customers and nearby University of Notre Dame students continued to call the restaurant “Rosie’s”, in honour of its original co-founder.
Feeding generations of Notre Dame students
By the late 1930s and 1940s, the cafe had become an important part of the South Bend community and the nearby university campus. Archives kept by the University of Notre Dame show that hundreds of students would walk through snow and strong winds along North Niles Avenue every Friday and Saturday night, forming long queues that stretched onto the street. To handle the growing crowds, the Bamber family expanded the dining room in 1947, increasing seating to 150 guests. The restaurant focused heavily on student customers, offering affordable lunch and dinner specials while staying open late on weekends when students went to the movies. Over the years, the cafe hosted political banquets, fraternity dinners and alumni gatherings. Figures including former Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Butler and Republican Congressman Melvin Laird spoke to student groups inside the restaurant during the 1950s and 1960s. A 1976 feature in Notre Dame’s Scholastic magazine said university students made up about 40 per cent of the cafe’s business. This helped create a family tradition in which former students returned with their children and grandchildren.
Scratch cooking keeps the tradition alive
The restaurant’s long success is closely linked to cooking methods that have stayed almost unchanged since the 1920s. Every sauce is made from scratch, salad dressings are prepared fresh in-house each day, and meats are prepared by hand using family recipes passed down through generations. The kitchen still spends up to two full days simmering its main ragù and red sauces before serving them with handmade ravioli and manicotti. Fresh bread is still supplied by Gonnella Baking Company, a Chicago-based bakery that has also been operating for more than a century. Today, Frances’s daughter manages daily operations at the 601 North Niles Avenue location. She has kept its dim lighting, vintage booths and historic photographs covering the wood-panelled walls. “Sunny Italy Cafe provides a historic take on classic Italian cuisine,” noted local historical coverage by Bluewater Healthy Living, pointing out how rare it is for an independent American restaurant to remain under family ownership for a full century. Instead of changing with modern food trends, the restaurant continues to offer a focused menu featuring broiled chicken, house-made sausage and veal parmigiana. As it begins its second century beside the St. Joseph River, the former North Niles Avenue Cafe continues to attract nightly crowds, serving as a living time capsule of South Bend’s culinary history.
