Rosario’s Pizza is Shuttered by the Health Department
Rosario’s Pizza, the fifty-four-year-old pizza parlor at Orchard and Stanton Streets, is currently closed. The Department of Health paid a visit to the establishment last week and promptly ordered it shut for “operating without a permit.”
The mandatory DOH sticker is pasted into the corner entrance of the restaurant, gates are shuttered, and the chairs sit atop the tables. Calls also go unanswered and without an voicemail setup.
Whether you like the pizza or not – many argue the quality isn’t what it once was – Rosario’s is an area legend.
Current owner Sal Bartolomeo started making pizza in the family business at age 16. He had recently been fired from a tailor shop gig for not speaking good enough English. So, his uncle Rosario brought him aboard when the pizza joint opened next to Katz’s on East Houston in 1963. It moved thirty-five years later to the current location at the corner of Orchard and Stanton Streets thanks to escalating rents.
The iconic Sal from Rosario’s Pizza, Sep. 2012
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