The DiCicco family in Fresno is ‘related to almost every Italian restaurant in town’
Fresno's Restaurant Royalty is a Fresno Bee series that tells the stories of eight of the city’s most prominent restaurant families. Have a tip? Email bclough@fresnobee.com.
What do the owners of Italian restaurants Five, DiCicco’s, Ovidio and LaRocca’s have in common?
They’re all related.
It’s a big, blended, extended family, but family nonetheless.
It all started with the DiCicco parents and their four sons: Nick, Frank, Roberto and Alberto. They called themselves the “Four Sons of Italy,” and had several other siblings.
“We’re related to almost every Italian restaurant in town,” Barbara Vitucci, wife of Roberto Vitucci, told The Bee in 2004.
The DiCiccos are part of The Bee’s series focusing on local restaurant families with several locations and often multiple generations involved that have shaped the Fresno restaurant scene.
The four sons and family opened the first DiCicco’s restaurant in 1956 at Belmont and Blackstone avenues. The whole family trekked to work in the back in the same Ford Panel truck that they also used to deliver pizza, according to family lore.
Parents Maria and Paolo Vitucci had two of the four Sons of Italy while still in Italy. Paolo died during World War II when the boys were young. Maria later remarried Pasquale DiCicco, who had four kids of his own from a previous marriage, including the other half of the Sons of Italy.
The couple went on to have another three kids together.
The family would eventually open 19 DiCicco’s restaurants, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley. Now, there are 12. Today, the children of the Sons of Italy run the restaurants, and they’re owned by different members of the family.
“We have each learned all that we know from our fathers,” said Joanna Vitucci Lopez, daughter of Frank Vitucci. She owns four locations, including the downtown restaurant, with her brother.
That includes everything from washing dishes to managing the business.
“My brother and I would sleep in the booth when we were waiting for our parents to close on Friday and Saturday evenings at 2 in the morning,” she said.
The casual restaurants have served Italian comfort food for decades, including the ever-popular Scarface, a rigatoni dish with chicken, sauteed mushrooms and Alfredo sauce.
But the family’s reach goes beyond DiCicco’s locations.
A sister of the Sons of Italy, Giuseppina DiCicco, married Carmine LaRocca and they learned to run a restaurant from her family business. In 1980, they opened LaRocca’s Ristorante Italiano.
The cozy, romantic restaurant at First Street and Herndon Avenue survived 30 years before closing.
They passed their skills along to their four children.
Daughter Virginia and her husband Frank Paolilli founded Ovidio Ristorante Italiano at Bullard and Marks avenues. It’s managed today by their son Rocco Paolilli.
Giuseppina and Carmine’s son Pat LaRocca and his wife Marina, along with brother Paul LaRocca, opened the upscale FIVE Restaurant at Champlain Drive and Perrin Avenue. It’s a hot spot that packs in crowds on the weekends.
Over the years, family members have opened and closed other restaurants, including Vitucci’s, and Fratelli’s and Casa Mariani (both at Cedar and Herndon avenues). Giulia’s Italian Restaurant and BB’s Lounge were at Marks and Shaw avenues. (Even the owners of Andiamo Ristorante Italiano in Clovis are distantly related by marriage.)
Even though many of those restaurants have closed, the memories and the family legacy are strong in Fresno.
“It’s really an honor to be part of such an amazing family,” Vitucci Lopez said. “It’s a legacy that is something that we all want to continue.”
