A True Italian Tradition

   Sicilian Matriarch Anita Bonafede is the Madonna of Quality Control at the family owned restaurants with the finest and freshest ingredients. From when Anita Bonafede and her husband, Joe, opened their first Italian restaurant in Torrance in 1968, she would put their youngest child, Joe Jr., down to nap on flour sacks piled in the back storeroom. From day one, the restaurant was a family affair. Thirty-two years later, JoJo's is a thriving family run chain where old classics are constantly being reinvented in ways that are refreshingly new without being nouvelle trendy. Anita now divides her time among many restaurants, still watching over customers as if they were family, a big extended family that includes major league baseball teams & other venues throughout California

    The toddler who once napped on flour sacks is now the managerial driving force behind JoJo's Pizza Kitchen, Anita remains the power behind the throne. She is a stickler for using only the finest and freshest ingredients, from the Stanislaus County plum tomatoes, harvested at their prime to the flavorful Italian "Basilico" , picked fresh daily and the quality bricks of cheese grated beneath her watchful eye. ("I wouldn't touch the pre-grated stuff,' she sniffs." You never know what's in it.)

    This is the secret of their success, she believes: classic comfort food, Italian style, prepared fresh daily of the finest ingredients, and presented at a reasonable price. Anita still makes her sauce just as her mother Guiseppina did 80 years ago in her native Camporeale, Sicily.

    Petite but tough, Anita overseas quality control in the kitchens, if not with an iron fist, then with velvet covered one. Her nose as sharp as a sommelier's, she supervises the preparation of her renowned sauce, which is made from scratch daily. One sniff tells her when a pizza in the brick-lines oven is cooked to perfection and woe be the poor chef that JoJo's employs who cannot do the same.

    She describes herself as a traditionalist, a description that encompasses everything from the way she raised their three children to the weekly Sunday dinner at home for which she lovingly prepares the same sauce that diners enjoy in the family restaurants. At the Sunday meal, a sacred ritual, Anita and Joe are joined by family and friends who sit around the same elegant polished table that graced her parents dining room in Queens, New York, where Anita grew up.

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