Okon: Forget Senor Tequila, remember D’Amico’s

Yes, the brightly colored restaurant but deteriorating building awaiting demolition on Jefferson Street was the distinguished D’Amico’s in its better days.

The city wants to see the Senor Tequila building, vacant for years, demolished.

The late Earl D’Amico didn’t much like the sight of it when it was new.

“He said, ‘Look at what they did to my place,’” Dee Philiph said, remembering driving with D’Amico past the building at 2219 W. Jefferson St. after it was converted to Senor Tequila.

Philiph is one of the people who contacted me after my column a week ago about the supposed imminent demolition of the Senor Tequila building.

Her late brother Bill Matay played in a jazz combo at D’Amico’s in the 1950s and 1960s. Philiph is among many in Joliet with a warm spot in their hearts for what once was at 2219 W. Jefferson St.

“A lot of people have fond memories,” said Gianna D’Amico Barone, daughter of Earl D’Amico. “Those were easier days it seems.”

Her father has a prominent place in Joliet history, although not for the D’Amico’s restaurant that was actually built by his parents, Anthony and Clara, before Earl eventually took it over.

His D’Amico’s 214 club was a showplace that brought in jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck, and a list of music and show business stars of their day to downtown Joliet.

D’Amico’s on Jefferson Street was a more modest venue but special in its own right.

It’s unique appeal is captured in a photo Gianna provided of a helicopter hovering over the parking lot at D’Amico’s. She can’t remember who it was, but there was a customer who would arrive by a helicopter landed in the parking lot to have lunch there.

Homemade Italian food and steaks cooked on a char grill in the restaurant were among the menu favorites.

“The food was wonderful,” Gianna said. “Grandma Clara made a lot of it.”

For many years, Anthony and Clara lived in an apartment built above the restaurant that Gianna described as “gorgeous.”

“It was a great place,” said Councilman Michael Turk, who voted along with with the rest of the City Council to pursue a nuisance complaint against the current building owners to seek demolition.

Turk even had his wedding rehearsal dinner there. But the building as it is now doesn’t evoke memories of D’Amico’s, which, Turk said, “used to be an attractive place.”

As for the bright yellow and green colors splashed onto the walls in the 1990s for Senor Tequila and still there today, Gianna said, “It was hard for my dad to see that.”

The demolition, assuming it happens, will be for many people a lot like what it will be for Gianna.

“Grandma and grandpa built it,” she said. “It’s bittersweet because they built it.”