![]() ![]() ![]() In 1949 Washington state legalized liquor by the drink, bringing cocktails into the mainstream and sparking a restaurant boom. Vito soon found work, and when Puzzo arrived in 1948, Vito helped him get a job at Ernie Steele's on Broadway. But Jimmy, the first to settle in Seattle, had landed a good job tending bar at the Rendezvous in the Denny Regrade. Puzzo had $16 to his name, plus a yellow convertible that wasn't paid for. ![]() I landed at the King Street Station without a dime in my pocket" ("Vito's: An Institution. Vito was penniless when he arrived by rail after the war: "I was on the train, and through Montana, Idaho and Washington, I didn't eat a thing. In 1949, a younger Santoro sibling, 19-year-old Danny, came out to play football for the University of Washington. Jimmy encouraged Puzzo to join them from Torrington a year later. By 1947, Grieco and the Santoro brothers were living in Seattle and working as bartenders. "We decided we liked the place and might come back" ("Old Gang. "None of us had ever heard of Seattle," Jimmy recalled. Jimmy, Vito, and Johnny Grieco served in the Pacific theater and either passed through Seattle or were stationed nearby at various times during the war. The jellybeans scattered with the onset of World War II. Snappy dressers in their teens, the young men called themselves "jellybeans" and tore it up on the dance floor - Puzzo even won the state jitterbug championship one year. Later, many of these same youngsters quit school to get a job in one of the big foundries or rolling mills of Torrington" ("Old Gang. "They were typical youngsters in a predominantly Italian community, tough kids who served as altar boys on Sunday, then shot craps after Mass in a nearby alley. The Santoro brothers - Jimmy (1919-1971) and Vito (1921-2000) - and their pals Charlie Puzzo (1922-2015) and Johnny Grieco (1920-1989) were street-smart boys and fine athletes on the playfields of Torrington, 120 miles from New York City. The story of Vito's began during the Great Depression with four friends coming of age in a Connecticut factory town. Although Vito's went into steep decline after Santoro sold out, the restaurant was reborn in 2010 under new owners Greg Lundgren and Jeff Scott, who remodeled Vito's with a nod to its colorful past. Senator Warren Magnuson (1905-1989), another devotee, famously said he'd rather be drinking beer at Vito's than sipping sherry at the Rainier Club. Governor John Cherberg (1910-1992) once called Vito's "the nicest cheap place I know" ("Elastic Rules. Situated close to First Hill hospitals, low-income apartment houses, and Seattle University, and several blocks up Madison Street from City Hall, Vito's was a smoky, convivial clubhouse where politicians and lawyers rubbed elbows with cabbies, bookies, and priests, and where regulars hob-nobbed over platters of Italian food, jugs of wine, and stiff drinks. Vito's was a beloved Seattle restaurant for more than four decades, from its opening in 1953 until owner Vito Santoro's declining health forced him to sell the business in 1994. ![]()
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