by Leah Lemoine | Photography by Angelina Aragon
There’s no such thing as a quiet meal at home for chef Joey Maggiore. “We’re a big family,” says the restaurateur behind The Maggiore Group’s 16 restaurants. “There’s always eight, nine, 10 people with us. It’s never just me and my wife.” Do he and Cristina, his partner in life and business, split cooking duties at home? “Yeah, we split where she doesn’t cook, and I do. That’s the only split we have,” he laughs. “She does the baking… I tell her, ‘Look, I’ll cook. I don’t want to clean.’” Maggiore let us poke around his Scottsdale home kitchen.
“My gold knife, my famous knife that I show all the time, is handmade by Jesse James,” Maggiore says. Yes, that one – of West Coast Choppers fame. His Chef Joey emblem melds the Sicilian Trinacria (winged Medusa) with the Versace logo. “I’m Italian! I love that imagery.”
“My favorite wine is Tignanello. It’s my favorite Sangiovese,” he says. “A nice glass of wine with my wife, we relax.” On rougher days, he pours an amaro with gin, on the rocks with a slice of orange. “It’s Italy in a glass.”
Maggiore’s spice cabinet is crammed with Spiceology containers. “They make the best of the best,” he says. He coats steaks with smoked peppercorns and rock salt, adds a chile-lime blend to corn and uses the maple-bourbon rub on briskets he smokes in his grandiose backyard oven.
“My father’s pleasure in life was he kept buying land in Sicily in a small town called Bagheria. It’s the olive oil capital of Sicily,” he says. To honor the late Tomaso, Maggiore and his sister, Melissa, keep his 100-plus acres of olive trees going and bring oil back to use in their restaurants and homes.
“In an Italian house, you always need a good San Marzano tomato to make a nice fresh sauce,” he says. “They’re not as acidic [as others], they’re very vibrantly red and sweet.”
