As children living above their father’s hair salon on Leonard Street in Belmont Center in the 1980s, the deMagistris brothers often played soccer and tag in the street.
Today, those three brothers — Dante, Damian, and Filippo — run The Wellington, a casual eatery with creative American cuisine they opened on that same block in 2018.
Dante is the chef, and Damian and Filippo are both directors of operations. They also co-own il Casale, an Italian restaurant with locations in Belmont and Lexington.
The deMagistris family is a throwback to previous generations — one family occupying significant business space on the same block over generations.
Their father, Leon, who still owns the hair salon Leon and Co., is grateful that his sons work so close to him. He sees them every day, he said.
“And when I’m hungry, I go across the street, and they feed me,” Leon joked.
Leon noticed that Dante had the knack for cooking from a young age. As early as middle school, Dante remembers watching his grandmother in the kitchen.
When that started, Dante said, it became something he did every day. He quickly realized that he would rather be cooking than playing video games or doing homework.
“Somebody had to cook dinners for the family,” Dante said. “They would just eat cereal if I didn’t cook something.”
He knew he wanted to pursue a career in food. After high school, Dante moved to Italy, where he gained valuable experience working in restaurants in Bologna, Florence and Naples.
With family scattered around Italy, Dante lodged for free as he moved around for work. When he returned home, he opted against culinary school and decided to continue working in kitchens.
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One stop on his journey was as a line cook at Pignoli, a restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Dante worked under Daniele Baliani, who helped open it in 1994.
Baliani’s first impression of Dante, 19 at the time, was that he was shy, but Baliani knew Dante had the talent needed to succeed. It was just a matter of getting him out of his shell. Baliani vividly remembers the moment he succeeded.
At Pignoli, they had five minutes to get risotto from the kitchen to the table. In Italy, it’s a 20-minute ordeal, where it’s made entirely from scratch. That wasn’t the case at Pignoli, Baliani said. Dante was taking too long.
“I got pissed off at him,” he said. “I think that kind of woke him up.”
As Dante honed his craft, Damian was on his own journey. While attending Fordham University, he began working in restaurants, but in the front of the house. He attended the French Culinary Institute to gain more knowledge about the management and finance side of the business.
The three brothers opened their first restaurant together — Restaurant Dante — in 2006 in the Royal Sonesta hotel in Cambridge. It closed at the pandemic’s beginning but was an “amazing experience,” Damian said.
In 2009, they opened il Casale’s Belmont location — also on Leonard Street — and the Lexington location in 2014. The Wellington followed in 2018.
They wanted to open their restaurant in Belmont because the quiet town had a stigma of being “sleepy,” Damian said.
When the town sold the old firehouse on Leonard Street, the brothers saw an opportunity to bring more energy to the town center where they grew up.
“It was critical that we had a nice, warm restaurant that spoke to some of our values,” Damian said. “A center where people could gather and have birthday parties and celebrate things or just catch up over a drink. And the town never had a bar until we showed up.”
Diane Gordon and her husband end up at The Wellington on occasion. The couple enjoys the free “yummy rolls” and the fried chicken, a $28 dish served with shaved cucumber and radish salad and hot chili oil.
“The food is always good,” Gordon said. “It’s a place where you can go and chat, but it’s more classy while still being accessible.”
Damian remembers the “crazy” energy of the first month The Wellington opened. Priests and teachers from their childhood showed up to support.
“I’ve never seen them in a place having that much fun and just kind of celebrating life,” he said.
This story is part of a partnership between the Belmont Voice and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
