The Italian-born owner of Amici Ristorante in Niles, Sarah Maranto Zimmerman, said the restaurant is closing after a 37-year run in Niles. She said she is ready to retire, but her sons might be interested in keeping the legacy alive elsewhere.
Zimmerman grew up in a family of restaurant owners from Cefalù, Sicily. She said she and her late husband Mike opened Amici after buying the property at the northwest corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Howard Street in 1987.
She said workers and regular customers alike were devastated to hear that the restaurant was closing after they heard that a new restaurateur was slated to buy it using tax increment financing.
Zimmerman said she has seen generations come together for life’s biggest moments at her favorite table in front of the fireplace. She said she had seen couples get engaged, come back for a baby shower, christen their baby, have their child come back for their communion, graduate from high school and college, and come back to celebrate the same rituals for their children.
Zimmerman said she and her family moved to the United States from Cefalù and her parents opened Villa D’Oro pizzeria on Chicago’s Northwest Side in 1965. There, she and her siblings learned the ropes to run the restaurant. She said four of her five siblings also own restaurants.
In terms of village history, Zimmerman said Amici’s roots go back to the 1950s, when two restaurants, the Highway Club and the Back Room, operated out of the building. mment=” near the intercq cosection of Milwaukee Avenue and Howard Street”]. ” ]. Zimmerman said Amici was “] the second business in Niles to receive a liquor license, and it still holds that license.
She bought the building in 1987 and completely changed it into the Italian-themed Amici, which means friends in Italian, to be a family-oriented restaurant.
Zimmerman said she learned the family’s recipes, including pizza, lasagna, ravioli, and bread, working at Villa D’Oro and also learned how to work all of the restaurant’s positions. She said the restaurant has been able to stay open for so long because it provides great service, connects with customers and employees, and offers consistency. She said part of that was having three chefs who stayed on for 30 years and other employees who stayed for a long time as well.
“It’s very bittersweet,” said Zimmerman. She said the restaurant was not closing because it was doing poorly but because she was tired.
“I think I want to have a little free time to maybe travel a bit and have a little bit of freedom to travel and enjoy my later years,” she said. “The place is still doing well,” she said.
Mary McGovern, a manager for nine years at Amici, used to work at a restaurant owned by Zimmerman’s brother before coming to Amici. “They’ve been great to me,” she said, speaking of Zimmerman’s family. “It was a fun place to work.”
Zimmerman said her sons Mike, 35, and Nick, 37, are managers at Amici and grew up at the restaurant. She said they might be interested in reviving the restaurant on a smaller scale as an addition to her brother’s restaurant, Dunkley’s Tavern, in Addison, Illinois.
Zimmerman said she had been telling the village of Niles that she was considering retiring and was interested in finding someone who would want to buy the restaurant. She said the village’s economic development department connected her and Chef Jimmy Bannos Jr., owner of the Purple Pig restaurant in Chicago, who is planning to buy the Amici property and open a Greek restaurant tentatively called Koukla in the space.
Zimmerman plans to keep Amici operating until its permanent closure in mid-April.
