Italian immigrant Giuseppe "Joe" Anzaldi worked night and day to achieve his dream of owning a restaurant.
"He was working a factory job and a restaurant job both," said his friend Chicago attorney Gerald Eisen, who met Mr. Anzaldi in the late 1970s and helped him close his first restaurant deal.
In that 1978 deal, Mr. Anzaldi and his wife and partner, Maria, bought an existing restaurant, Manzo's Ristorante, on West Irving Park Road in Chicago's Old Irving Park neighborhood.
They later moved about a block away in the 3200 block of Irving Park before selling the restaurant in 1990 and taking over a Des Plaines banquet hall then called Arthur's.
A couple of years later, Mr. Anzaldi and his wife changed the name to Manzo's Banquets. The family still operates the business on Elmhurst Road in Des Plaines.
Mr. Anzaldi, 67, died of mesothelioma on Wednesday, Oct. 23, in Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview, according to his daughter, Maria Teresa Passannante. He was a longtime resident of Glenview.
He grew up in Sicily, in the municipality of Alimena. He had a grandfather living in Chicago, and in 1969 Mr. Anzaldi came here with other family members.
He soon found a factory job during the day, then began working nights at Trattoria Porretta in Chicago.
"Joe came looking for a job and I gave him one," said Pasquale Porretta, adding that Mr. Anzaldi was soon making pizzas. He later worked in other restaurants.
"He loved to cook, and it was his dream to have his own restaurant one day," said his daughter.
Maria Larocca was also newly arrived in Chicago from Italy when Mr. Anzaldi met her in 1969. By 1976, the two were married and working together to save money for the dream of owning their own restaurant.
"They were always together," his daughter said.
Manzo's on Irving Park had been a well-known pizza place for years when the Anzaldis took it over, but Mr. Anzaldi soon brought his own touch to the place.
"He developed his own recipes," Passannante said, adding that her father's pizzas included deep-dish, stuffed and thin crust.
"One thing everyone always came back for was his chicken tetrazzini," his daughter said.
Mr. Anzaldi continued to cook, even as the scale of his operations grew.
"He had chefs and cooks, but there were times when he went in back and started cooking," his daughter said. "He always wanted to try something new."
While Mr. Anzaldi was willing to change the menu from time to time, there was one aspect of his business that never changed.
"His goal was making sure people when they left here were happy," Passannante said, adding that no matter how late or long the hours, her father loved what he did.
"A hard-working guy who in the positive sense did whatever it took to succeed," Eisen said.
Other survivors include a son, Santo; and a brother, Franco.
Services were held.
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