By Neal Wagner
After her father, Giuseppe Bertolone, died in March 2013, Joe's Italian owner Sonia Bertolone-Carillo didn't have much time to mourn his passing. "We didn't have much of an opportunity to grieve because we were working all the time," Bertolone-Carillo said of her family, noting they regularly put in 90 or more hours operating the restaurant each week.
"When we opened the restaurant, I never anticipated it would hit $2 million in sales at $7 a plate." Joe Bertolone was born in Sicily, Italy, and moved to California with his wife, Elvira, in 1977 before opening the original Joe's Italian restaurant in Gilroy, Calif. in 1981.
