Gathering place now at 2 N. Main St.
By John Tredrea, Staff Writer
Downtown Pennington without the old Vito’s Pizza?
For a long time, that’s been pretty hard to imagine. Vito’s set up shop at 4 N. Main St. in the late 1980s and literally since its first day of operation has been one of the most briskly patronized businesses in the Hopewell Valley area.
More than an eatery, it’s been a gathering place for people of all ages.
Typical sights at Vito’s A table surrounded by grade-school-age children in soccer uniforms eating pizza, next to a table with men in business suits eating subs. Next to them is seated a family having salads and other Italian fare. Then there’s a table crowded with teenagers from Central High School or The Pennington School, or Timberlane Middle School children having soft drinks and slices of pizza and hot sandwiches. Then, there are the college students who have come to Vito’s, their beloved old stomping grounds, while home a few weeks on semester break … and on it goes.
Vito’s is gone from 4 N. Main now. Not to worry, though. Vito’s moved next door, to 2 N. Main on Friday. The new place is more spacious, snazzier check out the fancy wooden columns out front and the hip-looking furniture and decor inside and has a bigger menu.
”I’m happy with it,” Vito’s owner Nat Casano said at the grand opening at 2 N. Main on Friday. “Everything here is brand new, and it’s quite a bit larger. We can seat 65 people now. We could only seat about 30 where we were before. We have more room to prepare food here, too, so we have more appetizers and desserts than we did next door.”
The new Vito’s actually opened for business several weeks ago. The old place didn’t close until the new one opened. Like the old one, the new Vito’s is named for Nat’s son, Vito Casano, who has worked at Vito’s since its early days. Vito’s sister, Marie, and brother, Vinnie, have worked here, too. The affable Pasquale DeStasio (known as “Pat”) is still on hand after well over a decade of working at Vito’s.
”We’ve still got some work to do before it’s completely finished,” Nat Casano said of the new place. “Some landscaping in the back, things like that.”
There were several well-known murals inside the old Vito’s. One of them a fine, brightly colored streetscape, covered most of the place’s southern wall. This work, easily 20 feet long by 5 feet high, was of the storefronts in the northwest corner of Pennington’s downtown area.
”The murals will be donated to Pennington and auctioned off, to benefit a worthy cause,” Pennington Mayor Tony Persichilli said at the grand opening.