Starting with a deli shop in June 2024 on the corner of Fourth and Main Street in the heart of downtown Conway, customers loved it so much, they wanted even more. “The customers were asking me to do dinners and I didn’t have the room or the chefs or the tables,” Leone’s Italian Ristorante co-owner and chef Jim Leone said. “And every day I stared at this restaurant, which was a Filipino restaurant, and I said, ‘Boy, that would be perfect.’”

After having the deli open for six months, Leone took a chance and officially opened Leone’s Italian Ristorante right across the street. “To be across the street from Tavern Two on the fourth and Main, here with the park and the theater. I mean, I don’t even know how I got so lucky,” he said.