None of Nash D’Amico’s family had the experience of opening a restaurant before he and his cousins opened up Damian’s Fine Italian Food in Huntsville. “Let’s give it a try,” Nash recalls saying, as he and his cousins had to borrow money to pay off the $300 per month required for the building rent.

Nash and his family brought a wider variety of Italian food and the family’s Sicilian heritage to the masses with the restaurant’s opening in 1975. Since then, Nash has owned 11 restaurants, including pasta and clam bars across Houston and Galveston. He has since scaled back to one restaurant in Rice Village, D’Amico’s Italian Market Cafe, first opened in 1996.