Those eating dinner might not understand the lyrics, but the feeling of Italian hospitality envelops the restaurant. And that's the magic Nicolino's Garden Cafe tries to create every Saturday evening.

For more than 20 years, Angelo Butera, a classical vocalist from Sicily, has opened Nicolino's Garden Cafe Saturday evening Italian Dinner Show with Neapolitan love songs—from Naples in Southern Italy. As waiters in tuxedos unobtrusively serve customers, Butera sings on. When the tempo of his songs picks up, everyone joins in.

For a while, hot pasta lies forgotten, forks are down and wineglasses stop clinking. Both adults and youngsters clap their hands to a fast-paced number. Couples stroll to the dance floor to waltz and tango. And the evening has just begun.

After Butera comes the culinary comedy, followed by professional opera singers such as Cupertino soprano Kaye DeVries. There are also songs from Broadway musicals.

Nicolino's Saturday dinners have attracted celebrities over the years, including politicians such as former state Senator Al Alquist and his wife, former Assemblywoman Elaine Alquist, corporate bigwigs like Steve Jobs and football stars like Joe Montana and Steve Young.

As sophisticated as Nicolino's is today, its roots are humble. In 1951, Frank D'Ambrosio Sr., a young, first-generation Italian-American, moved to California from the East Coast in search of his dreams. He opened a small sausage factory, and that opening was the birth of a family business that now operates six popular restaurants that have survived the dramatic ups and downs of the Silicon Valley economy.

The family's Italian restaurant empire includes three Frankie, Johnnie and Luigi Too restaurants in Mountain View, Dublin and San Jose, two Giorgio's Italian Food and Pizzerias in San Jose and Milpitas, and Nicolino's.

The family's foray into an upscale restaurant began in the late '70s, when Frank D'Ambrosio Sr.'s four sons—Don, Nick, Frank and John— took over the New York Style Sausage Company and were looking to expand business. At the time, the sausage company was selling to stores and restaurants.

Around 1978 or '79, the D'Ambrosio brothers wanted to shift the location of the company from El Camino Real to a property they had purchased at the intersection of Tasman and Reamwood. They wanted to start a retail outlet so the public could buy sausage directly from them. This was during the very beginnings of the technology boom in Silicon Valley, and high-tech businesses were mushrooming around their property.

"So instead of having just a retail outlet next to the sausage store, we thought we'd have a sandwich shop that would cater to the growing population," says John D'Ambrosio, who manages Nicolino's these days. But by the time they moved into the new sausage company location, it was early 1980, and the D' Ambrosios' plans had changed from starting a shop to starting a restaurant.

Their plans actually changed seven times before they finally decided to build a 10,000-square-foot restaurant—not just any restaurant, says John D'Ambrosio, but a high-end one with banquets and the works that would "captivate the Silicon Valley."

At that time the family was already running two successful restaurants—Giorgio's in San Jose and Frankie, Johnnie and Luigi Too in Mountain View.

Finally, in June of 1981, Nicolino's opened its doors to the public. "Right off the bat, we were received very well. Immediately we became the powerhouse for corporate lunches—in fact, we were the first 'power lunch' place at that time," says D'Ambrosio.

Nights and weekends, however, were a different story.

Though the restaurant is located close to high-tech companies, it is far removed from the main streets of Sunnyvale, and there is no foot traffic in the area. Nicolino's struggled to draw crowds during the evenings.

The brothers realized they had to do something extra special to attract people. They came up with the idea of live entertainment.

Since then, Nicolino's has had some form of live music every night. Mondays through Thursdays, John Roselada plays the piano. On Fridays, there is a Romantic Gypsy Violin Show, with Tibor Horvath on the violin and Yelena Savchenko on the piano.

But Saturdays are special. Around 1982, Mary Anne Fallon, Nicolino's marketing director, came up with the idea of having full-scale live entertainment for Saturdays. "So we created the Italian Dinner Show," recalls John D' Ambrosio.

And the performers are professionals.

The opera singers at Nicolino's are virtuosos. All of them perform with various opera groups around the country. Leland Morine is a baritone who has performed with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Marin Opera Association, West Bay Opera and several New York opera groups. His deep voice reverberates throughout the restaurant on Saturdays.

Kaye DeVries, a Cupertino native, is the soprano at Nicolino's. DeVries has been performing Saturday evenings at the restaurant for the past five years. She has performed with the New York Metropolitan and San Francisco operas and has played several roles in various musicals. She has also performed for the San Jose Symphony and the Carmel Bach Festival and toured with Columbia Artists and Allied Artists in the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia.

Leland and DeVries perform together as a powerful duo on Saturday nights.

Angelo Butero, the singer who opens the show, is a classical musician who studied at the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory of Music in Palermo, Italy. He has performed on television and radio and is considered a "star" singer at Italian festivals in Northern California.

Nicolino's clarinetist, Joe Di Vittorio, is a featured soloist with German, American and Neapolitan bands throughout the Bay Area, and Joe Santoro, who is the percussionist in the group, owns the South Bay School of Music in Milpitas and appears at numerous night clubs in the Bay Area.

John D'Ambrosio says the restaurant manages to get these professional singers and musicians because "Today there are wonderful players and musicians and they don't have any place to play. Years ago there would be piano bars, jazz clubs, supper clubs and bands and so on," he says. "But now with DJs and changing trends in music, these wonderful musicians are not appreciated anymore. It's nice to introduce some quality and real music to the world."

The restaurant has also been a training ground for some of its younger singers. "We had a guy who was singing opera for us who went and opened up at the Sydney opera house in Australia," says D'Ambrosio.

John D'Ambrosio says dining at Nicolino's can be a romantic dinner for two or a wholesome evening out for a family. "And it's interesting how many families and young people come in and enjoy this music. In fact, the kids behave better than the adults when the opera is on. The kids watch the show with their eyes wide open, while the adults are chatting," says Fallon.

If music at Nicolino's is grand, then the food presentation is grandiose. The restaurant offers table-side cooking with flaming entrees, flaming desserts and even Caffe Diavolo, which is coffee the flambé way.

To complete the Italian experience, the restaurant is designed to look like a "palazzo," an Italian palace. The main hall where all the entertainment takes place has glass-paneled walls, low-hanging European-style light fixtures, Roman columns, murals and a ceiling painted with clouds.

Over the years Nicolino's developed a close relationship with corporations. Fallon says high-tech giant Hewlet Packard in Cupertino has been one of its main clients.

When the high-tech economy slumped, the restaurant took a heavy hit. In an attempt to grow their customer base, the owners introduced a different show, one that didn't have any opera, on Saturday evenings.

"But our patrons did not like it too much. So a few months ago we revived the Italian Dinner Show, and now we are regrowing with the market," says John D'Ambrosio.

The thriving New York Style Sausage Company is right next door, selling to such companies as Safeway, Nob Hill and Costco.

Ups and downs apart, D'Ambrosio says Nicolino's is all about love. "When you go out with your loved one and you cork open a nice bottle of wine with some good music in the background and you have a nice table-side cooking and little bit of pasta together—that's love. That's amore."

Nicolino's Garden Cafe is located at 1228 Reamwood Ave., Sunnyvale. For more informtion visit http://nicolinos.citysearch.com or call 408.734.5323.