Lindsay Marie Morris

Like my Sicilian grandparents, Mario Sanfilippo's family emigrated to Milwaukee from Porticello, Sicily, in search of a better life. After his uncle passed away, his grandparents relocated to the Boston area. Mario and his family joined them when he was 10, but always kept a piece of his Tyrrhenian seaside hometown in his heart.

His love of his mother's Sicilian cooking inspired him to seek work in restaurants, starting from a young age. He was just 11 when he got a job at a pizzeria, where he bused tables and washed dishes. Even while pursuing a bachelor's degree at the University of North Carolina, where he played soccer, he would pick up shifts at a local restaurant. He'd continue to do so, even while working in the banking industry.

"Somehow, I always ended up at a restaurant," Mario says. 

In 1992, he left his job to open Mario's Trattoria, an Italian eatery in Dorchester, right in the heart of Boston's Irish section. Six years later, he opened Porticello Ristorante in South Easton, Massachusetts, south of Boston and east of Rhode Island. He shared more about his passion, journey, challenges, favorite dishes, lessons, and what he hopes customers take away.

What do you enjoy most about running a restaurant?

It's social. You've got instant gratification. You give somebody a good product, and they let you know about it. You develop a lot of different relationships along the way, whether it be vendors or patrons. I combined my accounting and all my background in business, and it was helpful opening up a restaurant and figuring out what would work numbers-wise and how we would do it. It's a combination of things, but I enjoy making people happy, which is part of it.

Porticello's housemade sauce 

Was there a pivotal moment in your culinary career?

It was in 1998 when I went from a casual restaurant to a casual fine dining restaurant, where I had to step up my game and surround myself with different talents. I threw myself into it at that point. You think you know a lot, but you're always learning. When I went into the fine dining end of it and became a pretty good chef, I got to where I could handle it. If that key person decided to leave, I knew I would be OK and could move forward.

View from Porticello

What inspired you to name the restaurant after your birthplace?

Porticello will stay with me for the rest of my life. I lived there only for 10 years, but I consider myself very Italian. I stayed connected to the Italian people here in the Boston area and played soccer with all my Italian friends growing up. It kept me watching RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana) on television because my mom and dad could hardly speak English. So, growing up with all that, plus Porticello had a nice ring to it. It's where I was born.

We incorporate certain things into our dining. We're primarily an American Italian restaurant, but we make the arancini the way they do over there. I make panelle and incorporate them into antipasti. I also do pasta.

We incorporate these things and don't miss a beat when we have the Italian Italians that come and dine. They know that we're authentic. 

Porticello serves pizza and pasta, as well as arancini and panelle.

What challenges have you faced?

Most people think about Umbria, Emilia-Romagna, or Tuscany. So it's kind of tough to push Sicilian food because they see it as more like peasant food. They don't look at Sicily the way they look at Tuscany. So it's a risk when you go into business if you want to tell people that you're Sicilian and push your food. There is still this discrimination. 

That was the biggest challenge because you could easily embellish whatever write-up you come up with and not mention Sicily, just talk about Italian food and touch upon all the different regions. It's easy to do that. It's challenging to tell people you're from Sicily, but it came easily to me. I'm proud of where I come from, Porticello.

A vibrant antipasto plate

What are your favorite dishes to serve and why?

I like to cook with a lot of seafood. I like doing Chilean sea bass and cooking with meats, whether a sirloin, filet, or rack of lamb. Those are staples at Porticello. But I also like cooking Sicilian. I like making a salad with fennel, tomatoes, olives, and simple things like that. I like simplicity, so when I grill my seafood, I complement it with a nice salad or potato. 

What lessons have you learned from being in the restaurant business for decades?

Don't stand still because you'll get run over. That's the biggest lesson. Don't worry about what you're doing and not what other people are doing. Worry about putting yourself first. Don't worry about the competition; worry about what you need to do to make yourself better. And it's worked financially. I mean, we get hit like everybody else. When there's a downturn in the economy, everybody feels it. We feel it. But if you're on good footing, you should be able to move forward.

Come for the flavors; stay for the experience.

What do you hope your customers take away from their dining experience at Porticello Ristorante?

I care about them and what I put out, and want them to return. But they know I've made a lot of friends along the way, and they know what I'm all about. I'm not about the money; I'm more about the experience.

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A fixture of Milwaukee's Bay View, Pietro's Pizza has been serving pies since 1973, when Sicilian baker Filippo Tarantino finally saved up enough to open its doors, 14 years after he arrived in the United States. He named it after his son Pietro, who still now owns the popular business. 

A longtime member of Milwaukee's Italian Community Center who also served multiple terms on ICC's board of directors, Pietro co-hosted the public radio program Italian Hour with his sister, Enrica Tarantino-Woytal, for 25 years. He also served as the liaison between the Italian Community Center and Chicago's Consulate General of Italy and was part of the Comites, the Committee of Italians Abroad. In 2019, he earned the rank of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia, one of Italy's highest civilian honors. 

Pietro is what we Sicilians would call a paisano. He hails from the town of Porticello, where my grandparents grew up and where I still have family. We recently discussed how Pietro ended up in Milwaukee, his memories of Sicily, and, of course, pizza.

Tell us about yourself and how you ended up in Milwaukee.

I was born in Porticello and attended school there. When I was 15 years old, I came to the U.S. in 1969.

My father had already lived in Milwaukee for 10 years, working for Grebe's Bakery. He came here in 1959 on a labor contract visa. He was a master baker in Porticello, with his own bakery not too far from the tobacco store.

Some of my family on both sides, on my father's side and then on my mother's side, had been in Milwaukee. Actually, my grandfather on my father's side was here in 1895 and left in 1905. He was here for 10 years. Then, my grandfather, who was on my mother's side, was here from 1922 until 1933. So there were some roots here, and my great aunt lived there. That's why he came here.

In Milwaukee, my father also worked at Angelo's Pizza, where he was the dough maker. He used to go there every day from noon until two or three to make their pizza dough. Then he would come home, have a cup of coffee, hop on the bus again, and go to Grebe's Bakery. He started working around 4:30 in the afternoon.

Tell us about your memories of Porticello.

Porticello? It's a dream. When you live there, you don't know what kind of treasures you have. It's just like when someone is free and doesn't know what freedom is until they go to another country where they've been controlled. You know what I mean? That town is a gem.

When I return, I always go to the old side, not the new one. And a lot of people ask me, "How come you're hanging around the old portion of town?" Well, that's where my memories are. That's where my youth was. That's where I used to walk with my grandfather. That's what I played with the other kids. We used to play around in Punta Santa Nicolicchia. 

So that is Porticello. It's a sweet place. It's a dream. I mean, all of Sicily is like that. You look to the right, and there is water; you look to the left, and there are mountains. And the beauty is that within 10 minutes of traveling, there is so much diversity. That's unbelievable. You go from flowers all the way up to pine trees and then on top of the port to those ruins at Solunto. One does not know what you have until you leave.

In Porticello, at night, you can open your windows, close your eyes, and hear the waves hitting the rocks. You don't need to have the TV on. You don't need to go to the nightclub for heavy music. Nature is to be appreciated. And then, of course, fresh fish comes there daily. And you can eat that fish. You can actually eat fish at eight o'clock that were caught maybe at four or five. So when you cook it, it's still alive. So that's the beauty of it.

You know what? You can take me away from Porticello, but you cannot take Porticello away from my heart.

Unless you are an immigrant, you really don't know the feeling of going away from the way life was. It's my culture, even though I've lived in America for 55 years now.

But Milwaukee is part of my life as well. 

Let's talk about Milwaukee.

Milwaukee has been good to the Italians. Milwaukee is a good community: nice, quiet, clean. They accept everybody—Milwaukee's good, period. And you know where the Italians went? Most of it went to the east side, and the other portion went to the Bayview area. We went to the Bayview area.

I've done a lot in Milwaukee. I went to school, I got my degrees, I did numerous jobs, and I made sure that the pizza place stayed open in order to hit 50 years. Right now, it's 51 years.

What are some of the ingredients and techniques that reflect your father's legacy?

The dough is the main thing. And I had to master that because with my dad, he never measured anything. It was just a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So it was very difficult. But I had to learn and ask questions because making dough is very difficult. You have to check the temperature and humidity, which tells you how much yeast or the temperature of the water you have to use. You need to know what kind of flour you need, even though it's the same brand. So you have to be careful.

That's the main thing that my father mastered. After all, when my father was a baker, it's not like nowadays, where you dump your dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and have the water that's already been measured, and you're done. They'd make their own yeast, what they call lievito madre. I remember my father used to go at 11 o'clock at night to do that. 

What's your signature pizza? 

I'm dealing with an American clientele, so the pizza we sell the most is cheese, sausage, mushrooms, and onions. But my father's signature was sfincione.

We make sfincione for the Italian Golf Invitational. And I make it every year. 

What do you hope your customers will take away from their dining experience?

Well, first of all, it's very fresh. I mean, I make dough every day right now. I use the freshest ingredients that I can. The vegetables and sausage are fresh, too. I get it delivered every week. Nothing is pre-cooked.

After being in the same location for that long, I've built rapport with all the people in Bay View. Some of the customers are the grandkids of the people we served when we started.

You have that kind of relationship with the clientele; that's the best thing, the human side of it. It's fantastic. It actually helped me grow. That's why I love Milwaukee as well.

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