After years of working in his family's restaurants in Milwaukee's Third Ward and East Side, 46-year-old Arthur Maniaci took a risk in opening his first restaurant in a small strip mall next to a jeweler and a dry cleaner in Fox Point. Over the next 24 years, Maniaci would turn the cozy 15-table restaurant near the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Green Tree Road into a second home. His regular customers would become a second family to him and his wife, Rose, who worked as the hostess.

Maniaci's Cafe Siciliano was more than just a neighborhood restaurant, though. For 14 years, Maniaci's was named in restaurant critic Dennis Getto's top 20 and top 30 lists of Milwaukee's best restaurants. The restaurant attracted celebrities such as Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Bart Starr, Henry Mancini and many players from the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers.