Italian job as Michael Maloco retires from Dunfermline firm

Not long after arriving from Italy, Angelo and his wife Caterina established a cafe on High Street in 1908 and the connection has continued all the way through to great-grandson Michael, who heads the solicitors and estate agents bearing the family name on Bonnar Street.

Until next week that is when he's retiring from the business, which was re-named Maloco Mowat Parker in the summer to reflect the change with sisters Laura Mowat and Stacey Parker taking charge from December 22.

Michael Maloco with Laura Mowat and Stacey Parker. The sisters are taking charge of the solicitors and estate agents on Bonnar Street when he retires on December 22. (Image: Michael Maloco.)

Michael told the Press: "I’ll no doubt miss the banter and the laughs.

"I’ll miss too the many professional friendships I have built over the years with other local solicitors, mortgage brokers etc.

"I’ll miss the many clients - well, maybe not the difficult ones! - it’s been my privilege to represent over the last four decades and whom, I hope, will continue to support the practice.

"They are in the very safest of hands.

"Laura, Stacey and the team, I know, will excel without me and that is exactly how it should be. The times are indeed changing and yet much, I know, will remain the same.”

He's looking forward to finally ditching the suits and ties and added: "I'm approaching my 62nd birthday and we've been planning this for five years.

"It's not a spur of the moment decision. I'll still be a consultant, I'll do a few days a month just to help out and get involved in training, which I enjoy, and I'm still a non-executive director with ESPC for another year.

"However I'll no longer be suited and booted!"

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Now a nonno (Grandpa) himself, Michael is married to Janie with two daughters, Hannah and Melissa, and three-year-old grandson Louis, he won't be twiddling his thumbs and has an Italian job to complete next summer. 

Known for superb ice cream and frothy cappuccinos, Cafe Maloco was on Dunfermline High Street from 1908 to 1985. (Image: The Maloco family.)

He said: "We've got a lot of interests; cinema, theatre, gigs, walking and travel.

"We're going on a big road trip in the summer to Italy that will take six-to-eight weeks.

"We'll travel down through France and 'home' to Barga, in Tuscany, where mum's family are from. She was a Corrieri.

"Then we'll go just south of Rome where the Maloco family are from, Casalattico, which Janie has never been to!

"It's very small, my grandad used to refer to it as a one donkey town!

"We'll then come back via Switzerland, Germany and Holland, where my elder sister Angela stays."

While he hopes to enjoy la dolce vita in retirement, Michael said it was the desire to escape poverty and seek a better life that drove his great-grandparents, Angelo Magliocco and Caterina Fusciurdi, to leave Italy more than a century ago.

Three generations of the Maloco (originally Magliocco) family ran the popular cafe. (Image: The Maloco family.)

He said: "It's 115 years since their cafe opened on High Street. It's now Next.

"My great-grandparents made the big move and came here. Like other immigrants they came seeking a better life.

"In Italy around that time there was a big migration.

"It was a very poor country, it had only been a nation for 30 years or so and it was still very disjointed."

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Michael continued: "While the cafe on High Street was being built my great-grandparents did, for a very short time, lease a shop which was opposite where we are now in Bonnar Street.

"The building is Marks and Spencers, at one time it was Graftons, but before that there was a small unit there and that was the very first shop that the Maloco's had.

Michael's grandad Crescenzo - Joe - Maloco eyes up a shot at one of the snooker tables in the billiards room. Stephen Hendry would later practice his skills there. (Image: The Maloco family.)

"There was just one billiard table at the back and a coffee machine, I don't know if they did ice cream at that point."

When it opened on High Street Cafe Maloco became famous for its superb ice creams, excellent cappuccinos and its snooker tables - a young Stephen Hendry even played there before going on to become world champion.

Michael laughed: "My dad always said he had wished he had let him play for free and instead agreed to take one per cent of future earnings!"

The cafe was open for 77 years. It was taken on by his grandad Crescenzo - known as Joe - and his wife Giustina, before passing to his parents Angelo and Nadia.

Michael said: "The original family name was Magliocco and my grandad Joe couldn't stand it and changed the name to Maloco.

"He anglicised it which is why there's only one 'c' in it, although there are parts of the family that insist on using two!

The family lived above the High Street cafe for 63 years in total. (Image: The Maloco family)

"As a family we lived above the cafe on High Street until my parents moved to Garvock Hill in 1971, so 63 years in total.

"The cafe closed in 1985 by which time I had come back to Dunfermline to complete the final part of my traineeship with W A & S Bruce.

"In 1990 we started Peddie Smith Maloco in Bonnar Street, it later became Maloco + Associates, and I've been here ever since.

"My parents had staff who stayed with them for more than 30 years and that whole thing about loyalty, connections and family values, I've tried to use in business too.

"I think it's worked well."