Brooke Jackson-GliddenFrom parking-lot concerts to a dedicated jazz lounge, Christo’s has built nearly three decades around food, family, and live music
Before Salem Italian restaurant Christo’s first moved into its Broadway location, taking over the neighboring lounge and turning it into a jazz club, owners Michael and Lisa Learn held concerts in the original pizzeria’s parking lot. The Learns, both musicians themselves, started making pizzas out of their house near the old Salem Hospital, but once they saved enough money to open their Church Street pizzeria, they dedicated their extra space to music. Those early concerts were “very rinky-dink, DIY,” in the words of their son and general manager, Sam Learn, but they were an early sign of what was to come.
Almost 30 years later, Christo’s restaurant—more specifically its lounge, adjacent to the dining room—has become one of the only places in Salem that consistently hosts jazz shows. Past the main restaurant’s bar, a door opens into the lounge, a stage bathed in fuchsia light as singers wail or bassists strum. On show nights, music lovers nurse Manhattans at small black tables and listen to touring and local artists. Even in the main dining room, jazz warbles below the chatter of diners, the hum of conversation.
Sam, who now books the family restaurant’s musical acts, grew up at Christo’s, folding boxes and watching his dad knead pizza dough; technically, he was hanging out at Christo’s before he was even born, in utero, while his mother took orders at the original location. Like his dad, Sam plays the drums, and when the restaurant moved to Broadway in 2009, his first job was running sound for the jazz sets. Over time, he began booking the small lounge space, bringing in both up-and-coming jazz musicians from nearby college music programs, local trios, and bigger-deal acts from Portland and beyond.
Over the years, Sam has watched musicians who started playing at Christo’s as teenagers become sought-after acts, like Garrett Baxter, a Portland-based composer and bassist who studied under Chuck Israels. Portland legend Mel Brown rolls through fairly regularly, but touring musicians like New York’s Nick Biello Quintet, Oakland’s Negative Press Project, and Seattle’s Fourager have also landed on Christo’s stage. One of Sam’s favorite nights in the lounge? The sold-out Mel Brown Septet show a few years back. “The feeling of that, having a smashing band playing on this side, everyone super jovial, having a great time, you see a plate come to somebody’s table, that’s the ultimate feeling,” he said.
Of course, the jazz club isn’t the way most Salem diners experience Christo’s. On any given night, the dining room is often full of families and decades-long regulars, twirling spaghetti and cutting into gargantuan meatballs in a room lined with old wine posters and art deco paintings. Toddlers waddle past tables, parents trailing behind, while they wait for bowls of fettuccine alfredo and Margherita pizzas.
Christo’s was a pizzeria first, and pizza still takes up more than half the menu’s real estate. The original Christo’s pizza recipe was created by Michael, now well into his 70s, who still comes in to make the pizza dough. The inspiration came, primarily, from Lo Coco’s, an old-school San Rafael, California pizzeria that first opened in 1971. “In the early 70s, there wasn’t a whole lot going on in artisan pizza,” Sam said. “One day he rode there with his best friend on a bicycle, and honestly his life was changed forever.”
Both Lo Coco’s and Christo’s serve pizza with a fluffy and airy crust of medium thickness, with the sturdiness of a good New York slice. Over time, the Learn family expanded their pizza options, tiptoeing into thinner crust territory with their “Napoletane” pizza (still not quite as squishy or soft as Neapolitan pizza—almost something between a Neapolitan and a New York thin-crust). The pizza cappello, a play on a calzone modeled after a hat, rocks a little more vertical height than the typical calzone, and comes filled with things like fennel sausage and salami, or feta, spinach, and olives.
But the Learns always wanted to expand the menu to include other Italian American standards, like pastas and piccata. The Bisnonna’s is the family’s take on a Sunday gravy, their great-grandma Erminia’s recipe for a meat sauce poured over penne. The Bolognese uses brisket in lieu of the typical ground beef and pork, and house-made fennel sausage adds intrigue to a sage cream sauce, mingling with tangles of fettuccine. There was a specific type of red sauce trattoria energy the Learn family wanted to tap into by expanding their menu: “A big, big production, Italian American place, a bustling place, happenin’ vibe, loud, Dean Martin music playing,” Sam said, “Big portions of chicken parmesan, chicken piccata, spaghetti and meatballs, so we tried to capture that, using the best ingredients that we can.” Sam is partial to the restaurant’s chicken parmesan, which uses thighs instead of breast for more flavor.
As Christo’s approaches its 30th anniversary next year—the original restaurant opened in 1997—the Learn family is celebrating what they’ve been able to pull off, thanks to their inherent scrappiness, or, as some might call it, jazzy improvisation. “Just having that DIY mindset,” Sam said. “It’s this never-fail kind of outlook; it helped us survive COVID especially. You have to keep going and figure out how to make it work.”
Christo’s Pizzeria, Restaurant & Lounge
1108 Broadway St NE
503-371-2892, christospizzasalem.com
UPCOMING EVENTS @ CHRISTO’S
The Carter Collective Open Jazz Jam — Salem drummer Jason Carter hosts a monthly jazz jam with pianist Marcus Harbaugh and bassist Ken Anoe. Jazz musicians of all skill levels are invited to add their names to the sign-up list and sit in with the group. 6:30 to 9 p.m. on the last Sunday of each month
Get tickets at christos.turntabletickets.com
This story originally ran in Press Play Salem issue 29 (Fall 2026)
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