Mike Ceccanti started his career in the restaurant business when he was barely out of diapers.

His grandfather, Ernesto Ceccanti, put him on top of crates to stir the minestrone soup fed to loyal customers of the Monte Carlo Restaurant, one of Portland’s first Italian restaurants.

”When I was 3 years old, I was running my tricycle over waitresses’ toes,” Mike said. ”When I was 7 or 8, I used to make raviolis with him. I could barely get my chin on the table.”

Now grown, Mike serves minestrone from his grandfather’s recipe – today stirred by his sons – at Ernesto’s Italian Restaurant, an eatery housed in an old church on Third Street in Bend.

The establishment, which opened in 1996, dishes Italian food with Old World flare. Absent are trendy California-style pasta combinations. The menu instead boasts spaghetti with homemade meatballs, veal parmigiana and fettuccine with alfredo sauce that will never be labeled ”lite.”

Mike, 53, named the business after his grandfather, for the Ceccanti story began with him in the Tuscany region of Italy in the early 20th century. Ernesto Ceccanti emigrated to America in 1922 and eventually moved to the then moderate-sized town of Portland.

He opened the Monte Carlo in 1927 in a two-story brick building on Portland’s southeast side, grandson Mike Ceccanti said. The family lived in a flat above the restaurant.

Ernesto Ceccanti ran the restaurant until the next generation took over. Mike parents, Elio and Lorie Ceccanti, took the helm of the restaurant and opened a second Monte Carlo in Beaverton.

Mike bought the Beaverton restaurant in 1989. He changed the name to Ernesto’s, but the style of cuisine has remained largely the same.

”Each generation has adapted the menu a bit for current times,” he said.

Ernesto Ceccanti served a lot of steak and potatoes because in the ’20s, people sometimes considered Italian fare ‘peasant food,’ Mike said.

The family added pizza in the 1940s, before the American love affair with the slice began. Mike said they baked the pizzas on cookie sheets and cut pieces in squares because round pizza pans were not yet widely available.

Mike serves his grandfather’s meat and marinara sauces and his father’s lasagna. But the seafood fettuccine and pasta classico – angel hair pasta with shrimp, olives, tomatoes, garlic, butter and olive oil – are his own creations.

Ceccanti family cooking remained in the Portland area until 1996. Mike had fallen for Central Oregon during vacations, and it was that year when the old Church of the Nazarene, then a French restaurant, came up for sale.

The church, built in the 1950s, had been converted to restaurant space in the late 1970s. The French restaurant, Le Bistro, occupied the space for 20 years.

When Mike and Jackie Ceccanti moved in, they converted it into a moderately priced eatery with a range of dining options.

The vast ceilings and tan walls of the upstairs lent toward a Venetian piazza feel. Jackie added red-and-white checked tablecloths and frescos as Italian accents.

The downstairs, which can be entered from the front door or through an outside entrance, contains the bar and permits smoking. Many patrons dine sitting on leather couches at coffee tables, and the room’s low ceilings give it an intimate atmosphere.

Both the upstairs and downstairs boast their own specials. Upstairs, the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet offers a salad bar, pasta bar with five sauces, entrees, pizza and vegetables. It costs $6.75.

The downstairs sports a weekday happy hour from 4:30 to 6 p.m. with complimentary appetizers and pizza.

The entrees provide generous portions, as well. Entrees come with fresh baked foccacia bread served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and soup or salad.

After all, Mike said, his family has always wanted to please the customer. His grandmother, Emilia, used to wander the tables making sure customers got enough to eat.

It made an impression on the young lad.

Cater to customers with good, homemade food in comfortable environs, Ceccanti said, and they will come back again and again.

”We want to make sure no one goes away hungry,” he said.

The next generation is already working in the Bend restaurant. Mike’s twin sons, age 14, help cook and bus tables at the establishment.

The Ceccanti family tradition, he said, is poised to continue.

Heidi Hagemeier can be reached at 541-383-0353 or hhagemeier@bendbulletin.com.