Close-Knit Cuisine : After 10 Years in the Restaurant Business, the Nizetich Family May Get a Taste of Leisure

No one in the Nizetich family wanted to start a restaurant--except patriarch Anthony Nizetich.

Nizetich had always wanted a restaurant. So when the Ports O’ Call waterfront shops and restaurants in San Pedro were being expanded 10 years ago and he was preparing to retire from his job at Starkist Tuna Co., the timing seemed perfect.

“And I’m thinking, now’s the time ‘cause I’ve got a daughter who’s a fantastic chef and my wife who’s a premier hostess and another daughter who’s a decorator, and I thought with a family like this I can’t lose!”

Nizetich consulted with his wife, Josephine. She hated the idea. He asked his daughters, Lucille McArthur, Antoinette Soto and Josetta Nizetich Spychaj. They wanted no part of it. Josetta had her own catering business. Lucille was a partner in her mother’s decorating business. And Antoinette, a flight attendant, was jaunting all over the world.

“So I signed the lease,” Anthony Nizetich, 71, said recently, as his wife and daughters glared at him.

Now, however, Nizetich’s family is finally getting its way. After 10 years of serving the harbor area’s most celebrated Yugoslavian cuisine, the Nizetiches are selling their interest in the 134-seat restaurant, Nizetich’s, to their business partners.

They leave behind a decade of 12- to 14-hour days, six-day workweeks, and a dearth of vacations. It was a life in which grandchildren never visited amusement parks, and mothers--Josephine, Lucille and Josetta--spent Mother’s Day preparing meals for other women.

Key to the Nizetiches’ success is that they were a close-knit family before they opened their restaurant. There was a strict Catholic upbringing. Also, the girls could not wear jeans or drink Coca-Cola; boys were welcome to come to the house but not to take the girls out of it.

Anthony worked for Starkist in public relations and traveled the country on business. Josephine vowed never to leave her children, so she stayed at home.

“We’re close because we’re friends, too,” Josephine Nizetich said. “Lucille and I did design work together, and we never had words in all those years.”

“That’s cause Lucille is your favorite,” said Antoinette, 39.

And you’re Dad’s, Lucille, 43, said to Josetta, 40.

“No, not anymore, now Tom is his favorite!”

“Well where does that leave me?” Antoinette asked.

The restaurant pulled them even closer--sometimes too close. It was a test they are proud to have withstood.

“The only thing we ever got out of the restaurant was their paychecks,” Anthony said, looking at his children. “I never received a dime. It was an investment to bring together the family if they wanted to--if it was their calling. It was a labor of love.”

*

The women describe it as just labor. They speak of running the restaurant as if it were a 10-year-long athletic event, as though they played and won a championship game. But now the adrenaline rush has faded, and the bruises they ignored while playing the game have started to hurt.

It was a grueling pace, Tuesday through Saturday, preparing food all day and serving 130 to 180 patrons nightly.

“You always seem to carry the restaurant home with you,” Josephine said. “It just monopolized our lives. And my rule was that there would always be a Nizetich on the premises.” And until two weeks ago Monday at 3:05 p.m., there was.

When the restaurant opened, Josetta supervised 17 cooks. By last week, operations had been streamlined to Josetta and six chefs. Josetta, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and the Cordon Bleu in Paris, bore the brunt of the load, as the restaurant’s executive chef.

“At first it was awful. I worked 17- and 18-hour days, and I just hated for Tuesday to come,” she said.

In the early days of the restaurant, Josetta would bring her young daughter to the kitchen on her husband’s bowling night, set her baby chair on a tray and keep an eye on her child while cooking.

“I tell you, I don’t miss it at all now. I have two small children and now I have more time to be doing what I should be doing,” Josetta said.

*

Lucille supervised banquets and Antoinette ran the front desk when she was not working as a flight attendant. Tom, 31, was the restaurant manager. Everyone was very good at their jobs.

Garlicky lamb, Mostaciolli--a sauerkraut, tomato and meat sauce dish--seafood and the restaurant’s famous Papa’s Stew, served in a big sourdough loaf, kept customers returning.

Anthony did not work at the restaurant. An attorney, he spent his days working at a legal referral service he had set up with a partner. But he regularly ventured to the restaurant to schmooze with customers and bask in their satisfaction.

“I did it for two reasons: my ego, No. 1, and, No. 2, when I went to the table I always knew that the food was (going to be) good and the service was good,” Anthony said.

“I call it baloney saucing the customers,” his wife said.

“I loved it,” he acknowledged, and then paused to reflect on human nature. “I don’t know why people care, but they like to have the owner of the restaurant come up to them. Movie stars and restaurant owners, they like to have both of us stop to talk to them,” he said.

“Baloney saucing,” his wife said again. “He’d come down to the restaurant to schmooze with the customers and baloney sauce the women.”

Anthony does not deny it, but then hospitality is in his blood, he explained.

“I come from a family that entertains. My mother would have us all over every single Sunday,” he said. “We never missed a Sunday dinner with her.”

“Yeah, and we hated going over there,” Antoinette added.

“We used to always say, ‘Why do we have to go?” Josetta joined in.

“She wanted to have her family around her!” Anthony answered. “I’m the same way. I don’t know, but I want my family here,” he said, index finger stabbing at the floor.

*

“Even at times when everyone would be down to the restaurant, I’d call up from home and say ‘Where is everybody? Isn’t anybody going to come over here with me?’ I like to have them around--on occasion.”

“On occasion? You mean every day!” Antoinette said.

“OK, every day,” Anthony agreed. “For example, I saw a beautiful corned beef the other day, so I bought it and brought it to Josetta’s house.” He sighed. “But we still haven’t all gotten together to have it.”

“Don’t you worry, corned beef in the brine only gets better,” Josetta answered.

With their restaurant work over, Antoinette will continue as a flight attendant, Josetta probably will resume her catering business and Lucille will return to interior designing. But Anthony is far from ready--emotionally and financially--to swear off restaurants.

So the question arises: Would he ever want another restaurant?

“Well, it all depends on what happens,” he answered.

“What do you mean by that?” his wife wanted to know.

“I mean, nothing’s decided yet,” he said.

“After what we just got through saying about what it was like?” said Lucille, practically yelling.

“We have not been living,” Josephine said.

“Why don’t you open up a restaurant on top of Mt. Everest, Dad?” Josetta asked. The others, even Anthony, joined in making Mt. Everest jokes.

“Yeah, you can barbecue in a tent on the mountainside,” they said laughing.

Suddenly, they stopped laughing. They knew what he was thinking. “I mean it,” Josephine said. Anthony smiled.

“You open a restaurant and you can call it Tony’s in Tibet,” his wife said.

Anthony just kept smiling.