Mamie DeLaurenti, 1911 - 2004: Grocery owner helped sell Seattle on Italian cooking

The matriarch of the DeLaurenti family that imported Mediterranean zest to Seattle dining tables for generations has died at age 92.

Mamie "Mae" DeLaurenti's love of Italian cooking and her thrill in sharing that love with her customers helped influence Seattle's diet to where the DeLaurenti name is synonymous with si mangia bene. That's Italian for eating well.

In 1946, Mrs. DeLaurenti and her husband opened Pete's Italian Grocery on the lower level of Pike Place Market. After selling the business in 1972 to their son Lewis, the store moved upstairs to the main arcade and evolved into DeLaurenti's, a specialty food and wine market at Pike Place's front door, First Avenue and Pike Street.

At Pete's, Mrs. DeLaurenti and her husband served a loyal immigrant clientele of Italians, Greeks and Sephardic Jews, as well as travelers hungering to relive the Mediterranean experience. Mrs. DeLaurenti, sporting a jet-black bouffant she had set every week, greeted customers from behind the deli case wearing a red-white-and-green striped apron over a simple dress.

She pushed morsels on customers, offering them nibbles before they committed to buying.

"Her life was the store: the customers, her relationship with those customers, sharing recipes, taking newlyweds and showing them how to make lasagna and minestrone soup, the very basic things that we grew up with," said Lewis "Louie" DeLaurenti, the younger of the couple's two sons. "We weren't an affluent family. We ate the basics — plenty of it, and all of it very good."

Mrs. DeLaurenti died March 13 at a long-term-care facility in Bellevue. She had been immobile since breaking her hip last May, but her mind remained alert to the end, Louie DeLaurenti said.

Mrs. DeLaurenti, born Maria Domenica Mustello, had worked previously at Pike Place in her mother's Italian grocery store. In 1928, she met the man who delivered bread, Pete DeLaurenti. They married in 1930, and so they remained until he died in 1996.

Although her mother lost the family store during the Depression, the space it once occupied would be revived in 1946 as Pete's. Mrs. DeLaurenti ran Pete's practically by herself for the store's first year, her husband keeping his bread-delivery job. When his route was done, he would join her in the afternoon. When the two sons were old enough, they worked at the store after school, the four returning home to Southeast Seattle together. "She was an amazing woman," son Louie said. "When she left the house at 7:30 in the morning, the laundry was done, the evening meal had been prepared. Then she'd work all day. She just did it all."

Pete's was popular but cramped, and customers sometimes had to queue up outside the door. Mrs. DeLaurenti assumed almost every role, from weighing the beans to slicing the cheeses and meats to keeping the books.

Born in Seattle, Mrs. DeLaurenti was the daughter of immigrants from Italy's Abruzzi region. She grew up in Georgetown and attended Cleveland High School.

The couple semiretired in 1973, closing Pete's shortly after DeLaurenti's opened in the market's main arcade. Mrs. DeLaurenti worked Fridays and Saturdays until about 1986.

"I think my mother was more excited than anyone about the move upstairs and the potential for growth at that time in specialty foods," Louie DeLaurenti said.

DeLaurenti's currently is owned by three partners who also own Pagliacci Pizza, Louie DeLaurenti having sold the business three years ago. The owners intend to always operate it under the DeLaurenti name, a lasting tribute to the hard-working family matriarch and her husband.

She is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law, Martin and Betty of Mercer Island and Lewis and Pat of Kirkland, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A Mass is set for 11 a.m. Monday at St. Monica Catholic Church, 4301 88th Ave. S.E., Mercer Island. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Northwest Kidney Centers Foundation, P.O. Box 3035, Seattle 98114, or the American Diabetes Association, 557 Roy St., Lower Level, Seattle 98109.