For people who remember Beverley in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rocco’s still seems to provoke unusually fond memories.
Opened in Wednesday Market in November 1989 by brothers Amir and Mohamed Namakshenasan, Rocco’s brought something rather different to the town.
Its menu mixed Italian, Latin and Mexican food, it became a popular place to eat and in 1992 the brothers expanded next door with Rocco Bar.
Beverley has no shortage of restaurants and bars today. In 1989 the choice was considerably smaller, and Rocco’s arrived with a sense of style and ambition that stood out.
For a few years, Wednesday Market had a little taste of the excess and optimism of the period. And in 1993, one story captured it rather well. Amir Rocco bought Rod Stewart’s Mercedes.
A Mercedes with a famous owner
The car was a Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC, one of the great luxury coupés of the period.
Amir hadn’t specifically gone looking for Rod Stewart’s car. He had sold his own and was looking for a replacement when the opportunity came up. The Mercedes happened to belong to Stewart.
Amir travelled to the singer’s home in Epping to collect it and drove it back to Beverley. He later said the car had appeared in some of Stewart’s music videos.
It is difficult to think of a more appropriate car for the man behind one of Beverley’s most fashionable restaurants at the time.
Rocco’s was already doing well. Contemporary reports described the restaurant as regularly fully booked, and the brothers were looking to expand.
They had opened Rocco Bar next door in 1992 and between 1993 and 1995 pursued plans to create a nightclub and members’ venue in adjoining premises.
Those plans brought them into repeated contact with Beverley Borough Council and the planning system, and ultimately never came to fruition. The brothers were clearly ambitious for the business.
Rocco’s in its heyday
Part of the appeal of Rocco’s was simply that there wasn’t much else like it in Beverley. Going out for dinner was less commonplace than it is today, and the range of restaurants was smaller. Rocco’s offered something different in both its food and atmosphere.
The opening of the bar added to that. For people in Beverley who wanted a smart night out, Rocco’s became one of the places to go. Its arrival had not been entirely straightforward. Before the restaurant opened, contractor Dransfield Construction was fined £2,000 in 1989 for unauthorised alterations to the listed building in Wednesday Market.
The later attempts to expand into a nightclub also ran into planning difficulties. But for much of the first half of the 1990s, Rocco’s was firmly established in the town. The brothers themselves became familiar figures. Former staff have remembered them as kind and diligent employers, and the restaurant provided jobs for young people in Beverley.
They also became involved in local causes. In 1994, the brothers supported efforts to fund local aid worker Julia Tarbotton as she provided humanitarian relief in the former Yugoslavia. There was more to Rocco’s than the rather glamorous image.
A very particular bit of Beverley history
Rocco’s closed in 1996. Today Wednesday Market is once again full of places to eat and drink, and many of the things that made Rocco’s unusual would barely raise an eyebrow. That perhaps makes it difficult to appreciate quite what the place represented when it opened in 1989.
It was stylish, successful and ambitious at a time when Beverley’s hospitality scene was much smaller. Its owners wanted to expand it further, and for several years it became part of the town’s social life.
Then there was the Mercedes. A huge luxury coupé previously owned by Rod Stewart, brought back from the singer’s home and driven around Beverley by one of the brothers behind Rocco’s.
It is a small piece of local history, and a wonderfully specific snapshot of Beverley in the early 1990s.
For a while, Wednesday Market had its own little taste of yuppie excess. It just happened to come with Mexican food and Rod Stewart’s old Mercedes.