After 58 years of tossing the dough, piling on the sausage and wheeling the pizza cutter across a landscape of mozzarella, Frank Serio has worked his last shift.
He hung up his apron and turned over the keys of Joe’s Italian Villa to new owners. At 70, Serio now plans, among other things, to take Jane, his wife of 46 years, to, at last, Hawaii.
“I owe her that,” he said, chuckling.
From humble beginnings to a satisfying look-back on a life well-served, Serio’s story parallels the evolution of pizza in Chicago.
Chicagoans first fell in love with the Italian comfort food in small late-night eateries that flourished thanks to the long hours, outgoing personalities and deft dough-throwing hands of their mom-and-pop owners.
A lot has changed over the years, Serio said, but this remains: People love their pizza. And for many, the dish is defined as cheesy, tomatoey, thin-crust pies topped with sausage or pepperoni and cut tavern style.
Serio’s grandfather opened the original Italian Villa Pizza in 1947 at 63rd Street and Stewart in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. His father and uncle helped man the ovens.
At the time, Serio was told, there were only a handful of pizza shops in the city. Being located on a street that was then the city’s “No. 2 economic engine” helped the business establish a footing.
So did the signature crispy thin crust and the accommodating nature of Serio’s elders.
“That street never closed. My father told me shifts worked round the clock,” he said. And the Serio clan stayed open into the wee hours to feed them.
“I remember waking up at 7 on Saturday mornings and my father just getting home,” Serio said.
For decades, the family would continue the tradition of only closing three days a year: Christmas, New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving. There were few family vacations.
In 1958, his grandfather turned over the business to his sons.
“Everyone was named Joe or Frank back then,” Serio said, laughing. He broke with tradition and named his sons Anthony and Mark. His daughter, Gina, played travel softball but Serio rarely got to catch a game. “It’s just the way life was,” he said.
In 1968, the operation moved to 88th and Harlem in Bridgeview, which is where Serio got his start.
He was 12 the summer day his father told him he was needed at the newly opened location. He worked 40 hours a week that summer, bussing tables and sweeping floors for 25 cents an hour.
“I made $10 dollars a week. But I was the only one of my friends who had any money,” he said.
When his aunt, who worked as a waitress at the business, learned about his meager wage, she confronted his father and his salary was doubled.
All through high school and every time he came home from college, Serio worked at the restaurant alongside his father and a host of other family members.
For a short time, he also worked with his grandfather, who still donned an apron a few days a week.
“How many people today can say that?” he said.
“Special” is how Serio sums up his career.
It was a special time when families worked long and hard together to build their dreams.
“You don’t see that much anymore.,” he said.
It was also an exhausting time.
“It wasn’t just our job; it was our life. Everything revolved around restaurant,” he said.
“New Year’s Day was the best day of the year for us. We had it off but we all gathered for a feast and to play pinochle and watch football. We ate like kings,” he said.
“We were a close family,” he said. “Things are different today. People can’t be tied down to business like that anymore. That’s why there aren’t a lot of mom-and-pop places.”
In addition to being dedicated, Serio said, what helped the Italian Villa enterprise was quality ingredients — they made their own sausage — and the outgoing nature of the owners.
“We could have skimped and made more money,” he said. But “but we didn’t want to shortchange the customer. We were accommodating. We valued those connections.
“You have to reach out to people and laugh and joke,” he said. “That’s what gets you through those long hours.”
In 1977, the restaurant was split between brothers, with Serio’s father staying in Bridgeview and tweaking the name to Joe’s Italian Villa, while his aunt and uncle opened their own place, Serio’s Italian Villa, in Tinley Park.
Things went well for Joe’s Italian Villa until 2013, Serio said, when the restaurant lost its longtime lease.
“We closed on New Year’s Eve of 2013 and reopened on Dec. 28 of 2014 in Palos Heights,” he said.
On opening day of the new location, Serio said he arrived at the restaurant at 10:30 a.m. to find people lined up down Harlem Avenue waiting for the doors to open at 11.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said.
He estimates that, over the years, the Serio family has served up 2.5 million to 3 million pizzas.
He said he expects the new owners, LazyMe2Day LLC, to have similar success.
To survive, he said, a small business has to care about more than profits.
“Even back in ‘47, all those years ago, we had the pizza ovens in the front so customers could watch a guy throwing a pizza in the air,” he said. He recalled how people would marvel as his father picked up the disc of dough and said, “Showtime.”
In the ‘50s, he said, there were only two sizes, small and large, and three kinds of pizza: Sausage, cheese and anchovy.
“When I started in ’68, pepperoni was becoming a hit. Then we added peppers, onions and mushrooms,” he said.
His favorite is the “SMOP” — sausage, mushrooms, onions and peppers — but he admits, lately, he’s cut back on his consumption.
Now that he’s 70 and retired, his attention has turned to grandchildren, travel plans and his health.
He’s walking three times a week and watching his diet, he said.
“But I do enjoy an anchovy pizza once in a while,” he laughed. “They don’t sell many of those anymore.”
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at donnavickroy4@gmail.com.
