“It’s Mr. Jubinville,” Tony Di Lallo tells us as a man and his son enter the Ville-Émard restaurant as if it were their second home.
“Dilallo, what is this?” », jokes Arthur Jubinville. “I’ve been coming every week for years,” says the 91-year-old man more seriously.
The loyal customer doesn’t even need to order. The waiters know he wants a fish burger cut in half with double the tartar sauce.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Arthur Jubinville and his son Jean chat with Tony Di Lallo in the restaurant at 2851, rue Allard.
“Mr. Jubinville is even the first customer who had the t-shirt with the famous burger upside down,” underlines Giuseppe “Joe” Maselli, who is practically part of the Di Lallo family (and who took over from Tony several years ago when buying his shares from him).
“Joe is the altar boy my brother Louis brought home from church to show him how to make hamburgers. And today he is the owner,” Tony says proudly.
“I started cutting onions and tomatoes on Saturday and Sunday mornings when I was 8 years old. I was a waiter, at the fryer… and I even became their accountant,” Joe continues.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
“I’m the baby of the family,” says Tony Di Lallo, who lost his brother Louis in 2018.
” I try to tougher there run to be there for the 100e birthday,” says Tony, at the height of his eighty-two and a half years.
Opened in 1929, Dilallo Burger is one of the important family restaurants in Montreal that has found a new generation.
Recently, it was announced that the Main Deli was closing, and the Montreal Gazette reported that the owner of Momesso, the famous sports café on Upper Lachine Road, wanted to sell. The latter also contacted the owners of Dilallo in the (vain) hope that they would take over, tells us Joe Maselli, who has two partners, including Louis Di Lallo (Tony’s nephew).
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Dilallo opened in 1929, a year after the Schwartz and three years before the Wilensky.
Since 1929
Like many Italians of Albanian origin, Luigi and Josephina Di Lallo took up residence in Ville-Émard. They lived behind the business with their seven children. “Before being a restaurant, it was a convenience store,” emphasizes Tony, the youngest of the family.
When his brother Louis unexpectedly made a sandwich for a customer who was asking for something to eat, his father smelled a good deal. He was going to sell what he did best: burgers. “He was doing a business, but he was doing it the right way,” Tony says.
His secret: hot peppers harvested from his garden. “My father was not tall like me. In the garden, we couldn’t see it, the plants were so tall,” says his son, who has also just frozen his harvest.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
The famous Buck Burger is always served upside down to make it easier to eat. Inside: beef, capicollo, cheese, hot peppers, relish, mustard, onions, tomatoes and lettuce.
When hockey comes to burgers
Dilallo is a story of burgers, but also of hockey. In 2007, Ken Dryden (legendary CH goalkeeper) even talked about the burgers at the Allard Street restaurant when his jersey was removed at the Bell Centre.
After being responsible for the hockey teams at Saint-Jean-de-Matha church, Louis Di Lallo, with the help of his brothers, created the Hurricanes club in the 1960s. They recruited a certain Ron Stevenson as a coach and allowed several young people from the neighborhood from modest families to flourish in sport. “We held the meetings in the basement of the restaurant,” says Tony.
Mario Lemieux, Jean-Jacques Daigneault and Marc Bergevin were on the same Hurricanes team, which won the 1980 Bantam AA provincial championship. That’s why so many photos of them line the restaurant’s walls.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
The wall of fame, although a fire destroyed many sports photos in 1997.
A move and a fire
Dilallo was originally located on Monk Boulevard. The construction of the Monk metro station for the 1976 Olympic Games forced its move not far away on Allard Street.
Thirty years later, a serious fire forced the restaurant to close. “Not working for several months, I was pretty lost,” says Tony, a dynamo who still volunteers every morning at church.
Tony Di Lallo is happy that his former family restaurant – which also includes franchises and food trucks – is heading towards its 100the birthday in 2029.
However, he finds it hard to believe that a burger sells for $8 when it was six for 25 cents in another era. He also understands why young people do not want to follow in the footsteps of their restaurateur parents. ” It’s hard. You almost have to live in the place. »
“The price of bread has doubled in two years,” emphasizes Joe, who does not want to skimp on quality.
His greatest pride? When he wears the t-shirt of his restaurant on vacation far from Montreal and someone calls him to say: “Dilallo, these are the best burgers!” »