Mario’s Italian Lemonade opens next week — here’s the story behind the Chicago icon

Summer starts in Chicago when Mario’s Italian Lemonade opens for the season.

If all goes as planned, many Chicagoans carry that sweet, slushy memory of Italian ice all through the cold winter.

“I want you to remember the last lemonade you had when it was hot outside,” said Mario “Skip” DiPaolo. He co-owned the iconic Italian ice stand in the Little Italy neighborhood with his wife and three children.

While the opening and closing dates vary with the season, May 1 is often the first day each year, and plans are currently in place for a Monday opening.

Closing, meanwhile, is usually around Sept. 15. That’s the date his father, Mario G. DiPaolo, died in 1984. Father and son started the business together around 1954.

“That’s the first year we actually went outside,” DiPaolo said. “For a year or two, we sold it inside my dad’s store. But then, to keep me busy when I was 6 years old, they got me a pushcart with a machine that you turned by hand. I sold it outside in front of his store where he could keep an eye on me.”

The original recipe has stayed the same.

“It’s just a mixture of sugar, lemons and water, made in a machine with lots of love,” DiPaolo said. “Lemonade was just a squish cup and 2 cents. People would give me a nickel, dime or quarter and tell me, ‘Keep the change.’ For a kindergarten kid, I was doing OK.”

The stand was built in stages.

“They tore down the stairs and put up what’s our counter now,” DiPaolo said. “The following year, he put a roof on because when it rained, we’d all get wet.”

The year after that, his father put windows in, because when they closed, all the kids in the neighborhood would jump over the counter and steal the lemonade that was left.

“We modernized it somewhat, but the structure is pretty much the original,” DiPaolo said. “The windows are what my grandfather and uncle made, but I restored them. There’s a lot of history there.”

The menu of Italian ice has grown over 67 years. You’ll still find the original flavor, which transforms liquid lemonade into its final, silky frozen form, with lemon rind and occasional seeds in your cup. Ripe, seasonal peach has become perhaps the most coveted.

I’ve been going since high school at St. Ignatius, a block away by an old shortcut. Back then, we bypassed the legendary Italian beef at Al’s Beef, across the street from Mario’s, for terrible pizza at now-closed student hangout Papa Charlie’s nearby. At least we knew enough to get Italian ice, and the smart kids mixed at least two flavors.

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Sometimes, that early May opening doesn’t always go as expected.

“I actually shoveled snow in front of the stand before we opened back up one year, which makes me happy,” DiPaolo said. “I like opening back up on a nice, cool day, hopefully raining and snowing even.

“Because as soon as we open, we get bombarded with all the die-hards that have been waiting six months for lemonade,” he said. “And if we’ve hired new people, they’re all a little green. They don’t have too many whiskers yet.”

You can order Italian ice all summer long, until the sun sets on yet another season on Taylor Street. .

“We’ll just put the sign on the window,” DiPaolo said. “‘Thank you. Closed for the season. Reopen May 1.’”

Mario’s Italian Lemonade, 1068 W. Taylor St., marioslemonade.com

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