Giuseppe “Joe” Maurici died March 15 after a long illness. He was 70 and lived in Miami Lakes, where he was well-known for his generosity and his southern Italian cooking at Domenico’s Italian Restaurant.
Born in Cittanova in Italy’s Calabria region, Maurici immigrated to the United States with his parents Domenico and Francesca Maurici.
“He was 19,” his nephew Dominick Maurici said. “They came straight to Hialeah. They wanted opportunity.”
The new arrivals worked in a relative’s cheese, sausage and meatball factory in Medley.
“Then my uncle had a partner to open Salvatore’s Pizza in Hialeah, next to Flanigan’s [Seafood Bar and Grill],” Maurici said. “Then he went off on his own and opened Domenico’s.”
Joe opened Domenico’s Italian Restaurant in the Lake Patricia Shopping Center in 2005 with his brother, Antonino “Tony” Maurici, who is Dominick Maurici’s father.
When Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida in October, the brothers fired up the ovens. Their neighbors didn’t have electricity and they were hungry. Lines stretched the length of the parking lot at 13975 NW 67th Ave., and for a week, customers got fresh pastas or pizza pies, many for free.
“We helped a lot of people who didn’t have cash,” Antonino Maurici told The Miami Laker. “We just said, ‘Just take the food.’”
Giving away food was a longtime habit of the elder brother, the way his nephew tells it.
“He’d give discounts to the regulars, too many discounts,” Maurici said.
Of other ways he ran the business, Maurici said, “Joe was always there. Early in the morning, my dad would buy the produce, come in in the morning and make the sauce. My uncle made the wedding soup, the pizzas. He did it all.”
And Joe Maurici was averse to changing what worked, whether it was the menu that his kids wanted to tweak, or how to track money.
“He was headstrong in the sense of saying, ‘This is what Miami Lakes wants and we’re going to keep it this way,’” Maurici said.
As for technology, “He had a computer, a cash register and a credit card reader, because he was not ready to let go of the cash register,” Maurici, owner of Caution CrossFit and Fitness, said of his efforts to modernize transactions. “He would still ring up everything on the cash register.”
When he was a kid, his uncle taught him how to make pizza.
“He was just such a good person,” Maurici said. “The beauty of the partnership was my dad and him, they worked together for so long, side by side. They saw each other every single day for 40 years, first at the cheese factory and then Salvatore’s. It was a beautiful relationship for the fact that it was a friendship, it was coworkers. It was so much more than just brothers.”
The family will keep the restaurant going.
“It’s a legacy in Miami Lakes and in our family,” Maurici said.
Giuseppe “Joe” Maurici was buried March 25 at Vista Memorial Gardens. Survivors include adult children Antonino Maurici, Domenico Maurici and Giacomo Maurici, three granddaughters, his brother Tony and 25 relatives who all live in the area, Maurici said.