One of Sacramento’s oldest Italian-American clubs says it’s changing to stay alive

“We cannot have a perfect life without friends” – quote on a plaque of Dante Alighieri at entrance to The Dante Club

The beige, drab exterior of The Dante Club — its only bit of flair a touch of neon and light-up crossed Italian and American flags — conceals a depth of passion.

This Italian-American social club was one in a long line of many in Sacramento when it formed in 1923, primarily by the parishioners of Saint Mary’s Italian Catholic church. Other Italian-American clubs were founded as early as 1887 in Sacramento and were dedicated to a range of pursuits as varied as a drill team and even a club devoted to the love of the bitter chicory radicchio.

In 1926, The Dante Club purchased its first home, at 1511 P Street. Later, when it outgrew that residential space in the late 1950s, it moved to its current space on Fair Oaks Boulevard. It has operated continuously, both as a men’s club and a women’s auxiliary, outlasting most of its paesani clubs.

With such a rich history, you might think that current members (which number 280 for the men’s club, 175 in the women’s auxiliary) would get lost in the thrall of the reminisce. Rather than harkening back to high-dollar bocce bets of eras past or the days when Italian was routinely spoken at club events, the talk of all in attendance at a recent Tuesday night dinner was firmly focused on the future.

The once-a-month Tuesday night dinners, open to the public as well as members of Italian descent, are a long tradition. They start around 6 p.m. by catching up with friends over a martini or American lager in the mirror-backed bar. This is followed by a wait in the line that quickly forms for the impressive antipasto spread.

Sitting at one of the large round tables in a quiet moment before the multi-coursed meal service starts, recently-elected club president Ron Pane earnestly evangelizes for the Dante Club of today, and the one he plans for six months from now, which he promises will be even better. “Pane” means “bread” in Italian, but he and others pronounce it as in window pane because, “when you’re a kid, after the 2,334th time, you just say “pain.” He joined the club in the early 80s with a dishwasher job, or as he laughingly refers to it, “pearl diving”.

Pane points out the club has a relatively new chef, a universally praised new manager, and a new event coordinator. The challenge is to make their event space stand out in a crowded market and to retain the Italian image, while still appealing to a younger crowd. Both sides of the club have been adding members in the last few months, but Pane acknowledges that the days when there was a three-to-five-year wait to get in are long gone. He says he and the board members are “rolling up our sleeves, and we made a commitment to guide the club,” saying, “after all, it’s 2020, a loaf of bread is not a nickel anymore.”

As part of that general forward motion, the women’s auxiliary, seems poised to become, well, a little bit less auxiliary. That’s the sentiment expressed by auxiliary co-president Debbie Catuzzo. A statuesque brunette with long periwinkle nails, Catuzzo is harnessing skills from her pre-retirement career in the county DA’s office to guide the club into the 2020s, including, for the first time, a women’s bocce ball league.

Catuzzo sips her white wine on ice — she jokes she’s the only Italian who doesn’t like red wine — and talks about the effort to shift the focus of the monthly meetings from bingo back to Italian culture. Most of the auxiliary board members, including co-president Carole Chivaro, met in an Italian language class at Saint Francis High School, which is where her daughter is nearing graduation today. She marvels that her daughter wrote a college application essay about the importance of making the family gnocchi recipe, exclaiming, “I had no idea it meant so much to her!”

By 7 p.m. the first course, a butternut squash soup with a hit of sage, is served. The tables buzz with conversation. A couple of young-ish (late 30s) male members decline to go on record about why they joined, saying their families are longtime members and they “grew up coming here.” The table clamors that blue-eyed Johnny “The Barber” Waldron, crowned by a fedora with a jaunty feather accent, is the man to talk to rather than these relative youngsters. Waldron confirms he is, indeed, a barber who owns a shop on Folsom Boulevard, and that he has been a member since 1984. He’s Ron Pane’s cousin, and grew up in “Little Italy” (East Sacramento). He comes because “we need to keep our heritage going ... you’re not going to find a better club!”

The corso di zuppa is cleared away, and platters of garlicky chicken marsala, sauteed chard and bowls of cheesy gnocchi are passed around, washed down by carafes of red and white wine.

Chef Jessi Moreno says the food she makes at The Dante Club reflects her love of cooking, which she calls “My life.” She’s a Sacramento native who grew up eating her grandmother’s carne con chile rojo, with “homemade tortillas, always.” She graduated from culinary school and juggled multiple jobs, including working in the kitchen at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. One of those jobs was as a server at The Dante Club, then lead server, then chef, and for the last year and a half, executive chef.

Moreno is free to be creative with the menu, except when it comes to the members’ meetings, at which the leadership specified that rigatoni with Bolognese sauce was nonnegotiable. She says the secret to her sauce is to use quality wine, good canned tomatoes, don’t rush the process, and to taste at every step because, “the difference between a chef and a home cook is seasoning all the way.”

And the difference between The Dante Club and other places she’s worked? It comes down to the “really sweet” people.

“My time here has made me grow as a person, every day is learning something new,” she said. “We’re family and our management team is really looking to make this place happening again. Taking care of people is our focus.”

As the night winds down, coffee and superb cannoli are served and the raffle starts. The raffle maestro struggles to quiet the crowd and Catuzzo cracks, “This is the problem with Italians — they don’t stop talking!”

Eventually the volume is low enough for the raffle — mostly for wine and liquor bottles — to progress. Pane watches over the scene with an attentive and somewhat worried mien. A lot is resting on his shoulders, and member after member at the club expresses hope that he can lead the club up to and past its centennial.

It’s not all serious, though. Frank Bartucco points, gesturing to his friends and family at the table and throughout the room, “We’re Italians – we enjoy life!”

If you go

Dante Club Tuesday night dinner

Next dinner: April 7

Annual ciopinno dinner: 3/7/20

Where: 2330 Fair Oaks Bouelevard

Info: www.danteclub.com/calendar.php

Phone: (916) 925-8230

This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 11:19 AM.