The food business most associated with Italians may well have been the least patronized by them. Food was so intimately connected with family life that only the lack of a supportive family forcedItalians to eat away from their homes. The earliest Italian "restaurants" were a product of the predominance of single males in the early Italian migration. Often, they were connected with boarding houses or the backrooms of grocery stores where hot meals might be served by the proprietor's wife. Saloons also provided meals and many developed into "spaghetti houses," which were some of the earliest businesses in the Italian community. By 1880, Giovanni Schiavo counted 30 restaurants and 33 saloons owned by Italians. Bacigalupo's Saloon on South Leavitt and Van Buren had a 'Family Entrance' in the 1880s, but it is unlikely Italian women risked public censure by entering enterprises associated with prostitution. [99]

For wealthier Italians, who traveled to the city for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, L'Italia could recommend at least five suitable Italian run restaurants and hotels. That same year, the Hotel Latiro opened advertising "Good food at reasonable prices" and cooking "entirely in the Italian style." However, most Italians simply could not afford to eat out. Instead, the restaurants on Van Buren and Clark were only visited by Italians in the evening, when the poor would go to load up their baskets with left-over bread. [100]

Even less demand initially existed outside the Italian community. Chicagoans at this time had an exceedingly low estimation of Italian foodways. Early Chicago restaurant menus included only an occasional Italian-inspired dish. In 1864, the Adams House offered Italian cake with lemon cream sauce and in the 1870s, the Grand Pacific Hotel served Macaroni à la Napolitain, and by 1917, spaghetti was available at The Sunken Gardens, the Hotel Sherman Coffee House, the North American Restaurant, and the Hotel Atlantic. Italian restauranteurs sometimes owed their success to their business savvy rather than the ethnicity of their foods. In the 1890s, Italians took advantage of the craze for oysters sweeping the city. "In the nineties the Italian Oyster Parlors were favorites," a resident of the North Side reported. "Mr. Raggio at Clark and Grand Avenue was the most popular." Later, Chicagoans could sample "Italian Style Spaghetti, A Thousand Yards of Happiness" at The Triangle Restaurant, begun by Italian immigrant Dario Toffennetti in the 1920s. But the Triangle enjoyed its popularity for its colorful signs, its chef in the window, and its billing as "The World's Greatest Ham Temple"--more than for its Italian specialties. [101]

Italian restaurants had a rather unsavory reputation in the city resulting not only from their unpopular food but from a public perception of their connection to saloons, transient single men, and criminal elements. In the 1880s, prominent Italian businessmen felt compelled to write in protest to the Chicago Tribune in response to a series of stories associating Italian restaurants with vice in the city. Saloons were often the setting for accounts of violent crime among Italians. Other restaurants earned their reputations from their owners. Colosimo's Café on South Wabash became notorious rather than famous in the teens. Big Jim Colosimo, an underworld crime boss involved in racketeering and prostitution, ran this popular nightspot. When the Black Hand threatened to poison or blow up his diners, he hired hit-man Johnny Torrio to allegedly act as bodyguard and restaurant manager. In reality, Torrio headed a team of strong-arm men. It proved to be a personally disastrous hiring decision. Torrio was credited with engineering Colosimo's murder in the lobby of his own restaurant in 1920, when he refused to involve his operation in bootlegging. [102]

Donna Gabaccia points out that non-Italian diners may have patronized Italian restaurants after the turn of the century more for their atmosphere, than the specific taste of their dishes. Italians were stereotyped as gregarious and carefree, and adventurous Americans "crossed-over" to occasional ethnic dining as a form of rebellion against the restraints of Victorianism. [103]

Most Chicagoans made their acquaintance with Italian restaurants during Prohibition, when one could get red wine served in coffee cups along with spaghetti from such establishments as Adolph's on Rush Street. However, while Prohibition introduced some Chicagoans to Italian foods, it did little to improve the image of Italian restaurants. Diamond Joe Esposito, a local politician in the 19th Ward and reported friend to bootleggers, gamblers, and murderers, owned the well-known Bella Napoli Café at 850 South Halsted, "where Chicago's social and political prominenti dined in the company of underworld chieftains." The Bella Napoli Café was an asset to Esposito's career since it allowed him to provide food for Christenings, weddings, and local celebrations. Esposito was a less positive example of a self-made businessman who began as a bakery owner on the West Side and ended his life with a mob style funeral accompanied by 300 cars with twenty-one flower cars. [104]