Enter the Madison Street location of Pizano’s Pizza & Pasta and you just might come across a wiry, gray-haired and mustachioed waiter holding court at a table. With the kinetic energy of a preacher or politician, he captivates his customers with inspirational sayings and witticisms.
Like the Rock or Slash, the waiter is known only by his nickname, “the Chach,” and he has been serving Pizano’s customers for more than 30 years. Search online for “the Chach,” and comments like “living legend” and “most inspiring waiter in all of Chicago” pop up. So do photos of customers posing with him. His fan following stretches all the way to Southeast Asia.
Chach, who turns 73 in June, dispenses sage advice to his customers as effortlessly as he dishes out gooey slices of deep-dish pizza.
“I give them something that’s not on the menu. I give them something that’s in here,” he explains, pointing to his heart. “You may walk in as strangers, but you will walk out Pizano family and Chach family.”
“It’s impressive the amount of fan mail we get in the office on behalf of Chach,” says Holly Malnati, Pizano’s director of communications. “Our goal is to become part of your memories, your traditions, and that starts with service. Chach is the definition of good service.”
“I’m not a celebrity,” Chach says. “It’s my way of living life. I’m blessed that people remember me and come back.”
Born into a family with Greek and Sicilian roots, Joseph Ciaccio grew up in Berwyn. He credits his parents, Nick and Angela Ciaccio, with inspiring his hard work ethic and for serving as a significant source of his seemingly limitless store of life lessons. As for his nickname, it was bestowed upon him at age 5 by his kindergarten classmates at Emerson School in Berwyn. He’s been Chach ever since.
In many ways, Chach was destined for the restaurant industry. As a teenager, his first job was working for his father, whose Eagle Store Fixture Co. helped design restaurants and sold equipment to such legendary restaurateurs as Dick Portillo and Rudy Malnati Sr. While assembling equipment for his father, Chach met Rudy’s son, Rudy Malnati Jr. The two became fast friends.
“We were like blood brothers,” Chach says.
They were so close that when Malnati Jr. died on Christmas Eve 2021, no one had the heart to break the news to Chach until his shift was over.
After studying business administration at Illinois State University, Chach had aspirations to pursue a career in law, but he couldn’t conquer the LSAT exam.
“I was a good student, but I didn’t have the natural ability for board exams like the LSAT,” he admitted.
Instead, he took a job expediting permits. Evenings, he worked at Pizano’s, which Malnati Jr. and his mother, Donna Marie Malnati, founded in 1991. Chach was among the restaurant’s earliest employees.
From the start, Chach demonstrated a flair for charming customers with his open personality, welcoming spirit and generous helpings of aphorisms. It’s all a part of his customer engagement process, or what he calls “Chachification.” Depending on where the table conversation is headed, he might share stories, offer something sublime, such as “the two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why,” or deliver a straightforward helping of common sense: “Be the person you’re supposed to be. Open your mouth and let you come out.”
As Chach explains, “I’m going to give you a life lesson that was given to me to make me a better person. I’m going to give you something to think about when you leave.”
The Chachification process has even been known to predict couple compatibility. “I meet couples when they are dating and tell them, ‘you make a nice set of bookends!’” After Chachifying the couple, he can sense whether or not they will make it to the altar. He keeps track: At last count, he has been part of 286 couples. “I’m working on 287,” he laughs.
He credits his ability to connect with customers to his religious faith and his upbringing.
“Goodness is the greatest force in the world,” he says. “When I see goodness, I give it back. The more I give pieces of me, the more life gives back to me.” Still, not everyone who walks into the restaurant, he admits, is Chachifiable. “Some people come here just to have a nice dinner. I don’t force myself on anybody.”
By 2000, Chach quit his expediting job and worked for Pizano’s full time. All the while, especially in the early days, customers enchanted by his personality tried to lure him away with lucrative job offers.
“People from all over — Italy, Vegas, California — I had offers from billionaires,” he says.
But nothing could pry Chach from his post at Pizano’s.
“It became more than the money. It was about the people. The Malnati family is like my own family. They look after me and I look after them. That’s the Sicilian way: the blood looks after the blood.”
When formerly Chachified patrons return to Pizano’s on Madison, they typically ask for the Chach. Some even send him gifts. He has a sizable T-shirt collection as a result. On the afternoon we met, he was wearing a black T-shirt from the Himalayas beneath his red Pizano’s polo shirt. He is especially proud of a personalized cup a family sent him recently.
“It says, ‘The Greatest — The Chach.’ I started to cry. People are so kind,” he says.
Among the celebrities Chach has served or met at Pizano’s over the years are Black Crowes lead singer Chris Robinson and actor Antonio Fargas, best known for his role as Huggy Bear on the 1970s TV series “Starsky and Hutch.” One of Chach’s dear friends is former Chicago Blackhawks star Chris Chelios. Lady Gaga would sit at the bar during the years she dated actor Taylor Kinney.
“Oprah’s in here all the time,” Chach says. “It’s her favorite pizza in Chicago.”
When he’s not Chachifying customers, Chach cares for his older sister, a retired schoolteacher who shares his downtown home. He also loves to read “everything from biographies to history, fiction, nonfiction. John Irving is one of my favorite authors. I also like first-time bestselling authors. You never know what you are going to learn.”
Chach has never married — “I never had any luck finding the right gal,” he rues — but customers tell him not to worry, because he has the biggest family in the world.
Decades of being on his feet have taken their toll on Chach’s hip, making it painfully difficult for him to navigate the restaurant these days. An operation planned for this spring should settle things. Otherwise, his vigor is intact.
“People ask me where I get my energy,” he says. “I got off caffeine at 30 years old. I don’t do drugs or smoke. I am who I am because of the good Lord who made me and the good people who raised me.”
He has no plans to retire anytime soon.
“I’m having too much fun here,” he says. “I love my job. I love talking to people. The day I can no longer do my job is the day I don’t come in.”
Robert M. Marovich is a freelance writer.
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