Rosario’s Pizza will Return this Week After DOH Closure, Owner Says
Rosario’s Pizza is on the mend and will return in the coming days.
Longtime owner Sal Bartolomeo informed us that the local slice standby – mandated closed by the Department of Health last month – should reopen on Stanton Street “this week.” The city agency had shuttered the fifty-four-year-old pizza parlor allegedly for “operating without a permit.”
There was no further comment on the reason behind the closure. Its last inspection had garnered 46 violation points with the DOH, according to city records.
Rosario’s Pizza is one of the longest-running businesses in the area. Sal Bartolomeo started making pizza in the family business at age 16. In the early 1960s, he had been fired from a tailor shop gig for allegedly not speaking good enough English. So, his uncle Rosario brought him aboard when the eponymous pizza joint opened next to Katz’s Deli 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.