Savoring the Emilio Experience

The sign in his store window said it all: “Sorry, We’re Open.” I don’t recall what year Emilio Maddaloni put that plastic sign in the bay window of his one-room Italian eatery in downtown Portsmouth, but it was instantly iconic. He made it by cutting a cheap hardware store sign in half and reversing the sentiments.

Emilio was a man who would rather be anywhere but at work, and made no bones about it. If you ate there between 1975 and 2005, you listened to his politics. You memorized his anecdotes, cracked up at his jokes, attended to his sermons and survived his rants. If you had a problem, he was ready to talk about it. If you wanted a burger, he’d give you directions to McDonald’s.

It was easy to spot the newcomers who made their way nervously into the hallway of what seemed like an old apartment house at 87 Daniel St. I can still see that “where-the-hell-am-I?” look on the face of a young woman as she peered around the doorway into the cramped eatery.

“Hey, little sister,” he called out above the crowd. “How can Mr. Emilio help you? Were you looking for the mall?” Ten minutes later, having sampled the cuisine, she was a fan for life.

The Zen of lunch

There used to be an old blackboard outside Emilio’s on the street that listed the daily fare. For the longest time it simply read: THIS is a SIGN. And indeed it was. Visitors came as much for the metaphysics as the food.

When Emilio flipped his sign over at the end of the day it read – “Yes, We’re Closed.” And it was a cold heartless sign indeed when Emilio elected to take a break and shuttered his shop for a few days or a few weeks.

“Emilio needs a vacation,” he would suddenly announce. And for those of us addicted to his lunchtime cuisine, the waiting was torture. We ached for his hand-made sandwiches (Italian tuna, meatball, spicy beef, or ham-n-cheese). We longed for his pasta fagioli, codfish cakes, sausage rolls, cold artichoke hearts, cold pizza slices, and potato kale soup.

You got what the chef was in the mood to make that day. No special orders. No apologies. If you arrived late, you went hungry. If you wailed loudly, he might slip into the kitchen and mix something up.

You could eat-in, standing at the little counter by the bulletin board amid shelves of Italian groceries, or sitting by the window beside the pasta display on boxes of unopened supplies. You could take out, but you could not call ahead because Emilio had no phone. And you could not be in a hurry. The food arrived in its own sweet time./

Character ingredients

Since the passing of Emilio Maddaloni, I’ve been searching for the words to paint his eulogy. But it’s no use. No description of the man with the mustache in the apron and the beret will suffice. If I say he looked a bit like Super Mario with glasses, what would you truly know?

Words like “eccentric” and “unique” fall short. Emilio was a full-on character, for sure, unafraid to be himself at any cost. Like many of us, he worked for himself because he could not work for others. But he loved and needed people. After closing shop he reappeared, now and then, on the steps of his former restaurant. Newcomers knew him as the funny man with the “indoor yard sale” of bric-a-brac and lost toys. He would materialize at grocery stores, leaning on an empty cart, and engage old friends, telling tales like the Ancient Mariner until your ice cream melted and the sun disappeared. He still knew and missed every former customer.

I can see, in retrospect, that the amazing Italian food was only an excuse for us to gather, day after day, to congregate and communicate. There was something church-like in the way we all congreagated in that warm, familiar, and aromatic space. We drew comfort from the rituals he invented. We trusted his gravelly voice and drew strength from his unbreakable confidence.

Like I said, no description will suffice. Some people are so fully themselves that simply knowing them makes our own lives make sense. I feel the same way about having known “Penny Poet” Robert Dunn, poet Esther Buffler, alleged UFO abductee Betty Hill, and historian Dorothy Vaughan. They were all, in their way, isolated figures, immensely intelligent, deeply focused, and unbending. They enjoyed their local celebrity, relished in it a times, because they had earned every accolade.

So I will use the same word for Mr. Emilio that I would use for the few legendary characters I have met. He was “nourishing.” Exactly how Emilio turned soup and a slice of pizza into a life-affirming experience, I cannot say. But in a world full of soul-crushing politicians, he will be greatly missed.

Cooking up a legend

“This can’t go on forever,” Emilio said soon after the turn of the 21st century. I cringed and laughed. He had been repeating that line for decades.

“A hundred years from now,” I told him, “some historian will recreate this little Italian grocery store as a Portsmouth museum.”

We joked about that future curator recreating the shelves packed with boxes of Amaretti di Saronno, colorful bottles of vinegar and oil, imported olives, canned plum tomatoes, dried mushrooms, and bitter European drinks. The little shop, complete with a talking Emilio hologram, would be accurate right down to the labels on the cans. The reconstructed exhibit would cost millions of dollars, I joked, and future tourist would stand in line for hours to sample his legendary recipes.

“You will be immortal,” I told him. “Tourists will pay big bucks to visit the Emilio Museum.”

“I could use the money now,” he said, unimpressed, and went back to sweeping the floor. It was almost time to flip the dreaded window sign to, “Yes, We’re Closed.”

We inched our way back to the counter where Emilio reluctantly lifted the wax paper off a few square slices of cold pizza.

“How about a pizza with lentils and spicy beef?” he said.

“I never get spicy beef,” I reminded him. “In 20 years have you ever seen me eat spicy beef?”

“C’mon,” Emilio coaxed for the thousandth time. “It’s good. You’ll like it. Mr. Emilio knows all.”

It was, and he did.

Copyright 2025 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved