Vinnie's, vidi, vici.

• Author: Pace, Lee
• Position: Vinnie's Steak House and Tavern - Expense-Account Dining

We could easily have been somewhere along Mulberry Street in Little Italy -- maybe wolfing down a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at Cafe Sorrento or sampling the seafood at Umberto's Clam House. The voice of Frank Sinatra drifts through the smoky haze of the bar and mixes with the noise of glasses tinkling, lots of talk, lots of laughs. There are no windows and not much light.

My friend Johnny does some business in New York.

"If they tell you to meet at 12:30 for lunch, you can block off the rest of the day," he says. "They get you back in a corner, and you're not going anywhere until 3 o'clock.

"We took some guys to a place called Vagabondo's for dinner one night. The waiters are all mid-50s, white towels slung over their arms. There are no menus. They say, 'What do you want?'

"One guy says, 'A steak.'

"The waiter says, 'Steak, two blocks down to the right. No steaks here. What do you want?'

"'What do you have?'

"'If it's Italian, we'll fix it.'"

So will Vinnie's Steak House & Tavern -- but it does steaks and has a menu, too. And you'd never dream you're in the cookie-cutter, strip-mall sprawl of North Raleigh.

On this July evening, Johnny and I are recounting old stories, praising the excellent health and countenance of our waitress, Caroline, and gaining 5.6 pounds apiece on overdoses of garlic bread, pasta, beef and red wine.

And having a damn good time.

That's the bottom line at 4-year-old Vinnie's, a beehive of activity every evening among movers and shakers of Raleigh business.

"My grandmother on my mother's side ran a restaurant in upstate New York," owner Charles "Dusty" Anderson says. "It was a steak-and-spaghetti place where everyone knew everyone else. ... It was just a place you felt comfortable going to. That's what we're trying to do here."

And, by all accounts, they're succeeding -- so well that Anderson recently opened a second Vinnie's on the other side of Raleigh, in Cary.

Anderson, 44, grew up in the capital city but has Italian blood-lines on his mother's side. He went into the restaurant business after graduating from East Carolina. After some successes and a failure that left him broke, Anderson came home to Raleigh and borrowed the money for his new restaurant from his friend Vince McMann -- hence the name Vinnie's. (McMann, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., owns the World Wrestling Federation.)

Anderson greets customers at the door, frequently having their favorite drinks poured by the time they get their name on the...