Joe Parlati

What Italian food comes first to mind? In addition to Pasta and Pizza now add “Parlati”. Joe Parlati is the owner of Ciao Italian restaurant in South Pattaya and is probably one of the most passionate Italians you will ever meet, and yet he has only been back to Italy twice in the past thirty six years!

Joe was born in Verona, the younger son of a grape farmer. Their mother died when Joe was five years old and life was not easy for the Parlati household. This was probably one of the reasons that both brothers ended up in the hospitality business. “Italy was very poor in those days, and the only place you were sure to get a meal was in the restaurant/hotel business.”

After High school, Joe had already begun work in a hotel that catered for Norwegian tour groups. His next step in life was serendipity - he was invited to go to Norway for a holiday. It was there, at age 17, the young Joe “Met a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and then we made three.” Now with family responsibilities, Joe had to knuckle down and work. The holiday was well and truly over. He began in the well known Norwegian Saga Hotel Maritim, where Joe lined up at the sink as a dish washer.

Diligence has its rewards, and Joe was rewarded. He progressed from the sink to the creative side of the kitchen after the hotel sent him to cooking school. From there it was to the bar and cocktail mixing with Joe saying proudly, “I won first prize in cocktail mixing in all of Norway.”

Joe really did knuckle down in the Saga Hotel Maritim - he progressed through the reception areas and the front offices, ending up as the Assistant General Manager. In that time, the holidaying dish washer had married, had two children, divorced, learned English and Spanish on top of his native Italian and the French he learned at school, and yet was still as Italian as he had been when he first arrived in Norway.

Holidays really do seem to be the turning points in Joe’s life. In 1985 he came to Thailand for a holiday and fell in love. This time it was not with blonde hair and blue eyes - this time it was with Pattaya.

He returned to Norway, and three years later, when his two children were no longer dependant upon him, he left Norway for good. “I had worked very hard, but I left everything. I have to start a new life in Pattaya.”

That new life was an Italian bar in Walking Street. Three years later he moved slightly northwards and crossed the street and opened the La Laguna Restaurant (Italian of course). Then in 1997 he moved back across the street and down Soi Samsaeran to open Ristorante Ciao. There the innate “Italian spirit” comes to the fore, with framed old and faded Italian newspapers, dating back to the late 1800s on the wall, and the Italian national colours everywhere.

I asked Joe how he could remain so passionate about Italy and he replied enthusiastically, “I’m proud to be Italian. When you are outside your country you think about how it was before, but not how it is now. Your attitude changes, you become more cosmopolitan, but I’m still Italian. I love my country.”

However, he is truly settled here, with his Thai lady partner who helps in his restaurant. “The Thais are like the Italians. They smile a lot, they got sunshine, they use their hands when they speak, and you have everything you need here in Pattaya.” You get the feeling that wherever Joe Parlati would live, he would turn it into “little Italy” somehow!

I asked him about his hobbies and he sat back and laughed. “Hobbies? I work 18 hours a day in Ciao. I look after my wines and my kitchen and take care of my staff, that’s why some of them have worked for me for ten years.” However, he did admit to watching football, the Italian league, before you ask, and likes music, especially Blues and 70’s pop.

For Joe success is, “Having an ordinary, nice life without anyone breaking your balls - and you can have it here in Pattaya. I have nice people as friends, and the tourist police are fantastic. I would hate to wear a white shirt and a tie. I like my blue jeans and a T-shirt. You don’t have to pretend you are ‘someone’, like people do in Europe, and life is not so stressful.”

I asked him if he would recommend his hospitality lifestyle for someone who had just left school and he said, “It’s fantastic work. You have to use your imagination all the time. You never finish to learn!”

So would Joe Parlati change any part of his life if he had it over again? “I would not change anything - unless I was born as the son of Agnelli (the owner of the FIAT organization),” and Joe laughed again.

Now in his 50s I asked him if he had any forward plans for the next twenty years. “Twenty years! I hope I have more than that! I want a nice life.” As part of that ‘nice life’ he now gets a telephone call every week from his children in Norway, one of whom is an accountant, and the other, the assistant general manager of Joe’s own hotel, the Saga Maritim!

Joe Parlati is very much his own man, laughing, likeable and inimitably Italian, and a man who deserves his ‘nice life’. Enjoy it, Joe, while Pattaya enjoys you and your company.