For the ninth straight year, October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee, presented by the restaurants of Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, dining guides, delectable features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food, aswell as voting for your "Best of Dining 2015."

As Jeff Sherman and Lori Friedrich reported, Giovanni’s restaurant, once the best place for a veal chop in Milwaukee, will reopen next week on Old World 3rd Street.

I have great hope that the new location can capture the same magic in its food that the old place, located at 1683 N. Van Buren St., had. But no matter how good the food is, it won’t be the same without Max Adonis.

Adonis was as much a part of the lure of Giovanni’s as was the veal chop or the Sicilian steak.

Max was about 5-foot-6 and weighed well over 250 pounds. He had only one arm and always kept the empty arm of his suit coat tucked into the pocket of his jacket. And while Max wanted to serve great food, his most profound desire was to have everyone believe he was a member of the mob.

Max was Polish not Italian; he was born Max Ludwig Gajewski; but, somewhere along the way he became Max Adonis and tried to pass himself off as an Italian.  He invited all the local mobsters to eat at the place, hoping that the atmosphere would rub off on him.

Going to Giovanni’s was an experience unmatched at the time. You’d park your car in the crowded lot and Max would come running your way to see if you were the kind of person who merited a parking spot. If not, he swore and shouted and waved his one arm until you got into your car and began to search for street parking.

Then he’d stalk back to his spot just inside the front door and take on the persona of someone who might just pull out a gun and shoot you.

Max Adonis was a myth. I knew all the Balistrieris back then, including Frank, the head of the Milwaukee mob, and his two sons, John and Joseph. Frank used to laugh at Max and his antics. The guys who had respect were named Alioto, Di Salvo, Basile, LoCicero, Maniaci and Piccuro. None of the real mobsters in town wasted a moment on Max.

In 1989 Max was on duty one night when he was gunned down in the doorway of Giovanni’s. Witnesses said it was two black men who did the deed, but police never solved the case.

There were rumors that the mob hired the two guys to hit Adonis to stop his fantastic bragging about his ties to organized crime.

I used to hang around at Snug’s, the restaurant in the Shorecrest Hotel that was owned by the Balistieiri family. Frank and I would nod at each other and maybe even say hello because my brother was dating his daughter and I was moderately friendly with his oldest son, Joseph.

Joseph used to hold court at the bar in the Shorecrest and he was a bon vivant just about unmatched in the city at the time. He always had acolytes and girls and other mini-mobsters around him. After Adonis was killed I remember Joe saying that the slaying probably made Adonis "happy for the first time in his f*&$%# life."

Say what you will about Max and his dreams, he knew how to run a great restaurant and we can only hope the new one matches the old, without the pistol packing doorman.