01940 Winter 2018_V3

Home cooking
Clear sledding for Davio's owner DiFillippo
BY BILL BROTHERTON
When Steve DiFillippo
was a boy growing up
in Lynnfield, he and his
friends would grab their
sleds and head over to the
Colonial Golf Course,
where they would climb to
the top of the biggest hill
and speed down toward
Walnut Street.
"When we'd get a good
ride in, we'd fly down the
hill and hit Walnut Street. I
guess there weren't as many
cars back then," he said
with a smile.
DiFillippo, the 58-yearold
king of the Davio's
restaurant empire, is
holding court from a
stool in the chain's hugely
successful MarketStreet
location. "If you told me as
a 12-year-old that I'd one
day have a restaurant where
I went sledding, I'd have
said you were out of your
mind."
He claims to have
flown home early from
Los Angeles, surrendering
tickets to his son Michael
for the climactic Game 5
Red Sox/Dodgers World
Series battle, to meet with
a reporter. It's all about
promoting the Davio's
brand, he says.
And what a brand it is.
There are 10 Davio's
Northern Italian
Steakhouses in the United
States, including a recently opened
restaurant in the city of Irvine in
California's fashion-forward Orange
County. There are Davio's in Manhattan,
Philadelphia and Atlanta. The company
has annual revenue of $50 million and
has some 900 employees.
When told that 01940 magazine
is published by Essex Media Group,
publisher of the Daily Item newspaper of
Lynn, he smiled widely.
"I was an Item paperboy. That was
the paper we got when I was growing
up," said the 1978 Lynnfield High grad.
"Many of our customers here introduce
me to their guests as 'Steve is our former
paperboy.'"
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