Restaurants we miss: Anticoli’s, once the longest-established restaurant family in Dayton

Antonio and Sarah Anticoli opened The Rendezvous Luncheonette at 1511 E. Fifth St. in Dayton on New Year’s Eve 1931, offering sandwiches, spaghetti, hamburgers and meatballs to mostly Stivers High School students. The first day’s sales totaled 5 cents, for a package of gum.

The couple had three children and continued to operate the Rendezvous for about 20 years, renaming it “Anticoli’s” a few years before moving the restaurant to 3025 (later changed to 3045) Salem Avenue in 1951. At that time, the site, formerly a firecracker stand, was outside Dayton’s city limits, but near the Dayton View area.

“We opened to mobs and masses of people,” Leo, who was a Chaminade High School sophomore at the time, said years later. “The first week was total chaos and the second week was still chaos. I remember crying myself to sleep after working until 2:30 in the morning.”

There, Anticoli’s grew in popularity and size, hitting its heyday during the 1960s and 1970s, when thousands of Dayton-area families chose Anticoli’s for wedding receptions, family gatherings, high school reunions or a quick weeknight dinner.

The Salem Avenue restaurant was remodeled several times over the years but always maintained “a Florentine atmosphere.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Leo oversaw the restaurant’s kitchen, while his brother, Tony, and sister, Gloria, ran the front of the restaurant.

After their parents died in the late 1970s, Leo, Gloria and Tony continued to run the eatery with help from the third generation of Anticolis.

Tony retired in 1995 and died in 2005. Gloria — described by her brother Leo as “the heart” of Anticoli’s — stepped away from the restaurant in 1999 and died in 2012.

Anticoli’s closed in 2000.

In an October 2000 Dayton Daily News article, Gloria Anticoli said about the closing, “It’s letting go of a life. It’s like a child, like family. It’s not just a business, it’s like a love affair with food and with people. I know people by name and by family relationships.”

The family business didn’t stop when Anticoli’s closed. Leo then launched Caffe Anticoli, which operated on North Main Street in Clayton from 2000 to 2010. After it closed, Leo and his son Chris moved south to open Anticoli’s Giuliano Tavern in Miamisburg, adding the reference to Leo’s father’s hometown in Italy to the restaurant name. That business closed on June 7, 2015.

Leo’s son Michael operated La Piazza in Troy until 2018 and his daughter Peggy oversaw a second La Piazza in New Bremen which has also since closed.