Little Joe's Italian American Restaurant
USINFO | 2013-05-27 11:30

 
Little Joe's Italian American Restaurant was a historic Italian restaurant which once stood in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, California USA at the corner of Broadway and College Street. The area was once part of the city's Italian American enclave which preceded Chinatown.
 
Little Joe's began in 1908 as the Italian-American Grocery company by John Nuccio, an Italian immigrant. When Italy sided badly in the war, many Italian businesses changed their names; one famous example was the change in name from Bank of Italy to Bank of America. Subsequently, the Italian-American Grocery Company became Little Joe's. Little Joe's is not affiliated to any other restaurant that took the same name.
 
Nuccio retired in 1922 and sold the business to his best friend, John Gadeschi. Gadeshi's daughter Marion married John Albert Nuccio who went to work at the restaurant after serving in World War II . The business remained under control of the Nuccio family until it closed in 1998.
 
Up until the closure, Little Joe's was operated by the third generation of Nuccio men: Steve, Bob and Jay. Jay went off on his own to The Crazy Horse, West Covina-based country-and-western bar and eatery. That left Steve and Bob to operate Little Joe's.
 
The restaurant closed in December 1998. The owners, having waited for a revitalization of Chinatown and downtown as a nighttime dining destination, decided that it was time to retire. With the revitalization of the old section of nearby Pasadena, it became more and more difficult for downtown establishments to compete for a dinner crowd .
 
As part of the revitalization movement of Chinatown, there are plans to turn the restaurant into a retail and residential hub with a large parking structure. However, very little construction activity has yet to take place at Little Joe's and other proposals for other buildings on the intersection of Broadway and College Street in Chinatown has not turned into action yet.
 
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