Rooted in Italy and made in America

For Pat Falcone, the butcher business is in his blood, no pun intended. After 62 years in meat cutting, Falcone is still going strong, with his sons, Joe and Patrick, marking three generations in the trade.

It all started in Calabria, Italy. Falcone’s dad Joseph immigrated with his family to the U.S. where he and eventually two friends, also from Calabria, settled in Chicago. In 1937 the trio opened a butcher shop at Halstead and Keller, “in the old neighborhood,” says Falcone. The shop was there until 1955 when the building was demolished to make way for a parking lot for the University of Illinois, moving to 7107 West Grand Avenue where it stood until 1990. It was here where Falcone learned meat cutting from his father.

“I started working for Pops when I was about 14,” says Falcone. “We used to do 2000 pounds a day in hamburger patties for a lot of restaurants throughout the city. I made the boxes. He used to say to me, ‘Don’t touch the knives; don’t touch the saws, because it’s very dangerous.’ He’d go in the back and take care of business. He’d come back and I’d have the chickens and the meat cut.

“I just had it in me,” says Falcone, now 74. “ I had a willingness to learn the business. When my friends would go out on the weekends, I’d be working in my dad’s place when I was 15, 16 years old. That was my passion. Either you have it or you don’t.”

Later, Falcone opened a butcher shop in Roselle in 1980 with a former co-worker. Then, 27 years ago, with his wife Nanette’s encouragement, he struck out on his own, opening Josef’s Elegante Meats & Deli, in Geneva. “My wife says to me, ‘Come west, young man.’ I was unhappy working for somebody else even though we knew each other for many years. I wanted something of my own. She owned a dancing school on the other side of town. She said it would be a no-brainer, ‘because there’s nothing else like you out here.’ That was in 1998.”

The shop is named after Falcone’s and Nanette’s fathers, who were both butchers named Joseph. Why the alternate spelling? “When we went to get our license, ‘Joseph’ was already taken,” says Falcone.

The secret to Josef’s success, says Falcone, is that his shop is true to its roots. “We’re old-time meat cutters, old-fashioned butchers. At one time, (if) somebody wanted a porterhouse steak, you went in the back, you cut a hind quarter down and you made porterhouse steaks. Unlike today, they open a box and everything is already cut for them.”

Customer favorites include the lasagna, Nona’s American Potato Salad (Falcone’s mom Helen’s recipe) and Nanette’s recipe eggplant parmesan. People still come from the old neighborhood to get it.

Josef’s uses no preservatives, chemicals or anything artificial, and everything’s cut fresh. ”We make our sausage and brats and Polish, old-world recipes,” says Falcone, adding that he orders many of the shop’s ingredients from Italy, like Parmigiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma. “We’ve been using my dad’s sausage recipe since 1937. We try to put everything on our counter that’s at least USDA choice or USDA prime, Iowa corn fed beef, black angus steaks. My customers expect the best, and that’s what I give them. That’s my forte.”