Antoinette and Chris Caserio walked out of Marra\u2019s on Sunday afternoon with their children, a menu, a pizza box, and a bag of leftovers they called \u201ctheir last supper.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s super sad,\u201d Antoinette Caserio said. \u201cMy dad\u2019s 80 and this was his spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marra\u2019s, the family-run restaurant widely considered Philadelphia\u2019s oldest pizzeria, closed Sunday after 98 years \u2014 a day in advance of the sale of its iconic black-and-white-tiled building at 1734 E. Passyunk Ave. in South Philadelphia<\/a>. The property had been on the market for several years. <\/p>\n The buyer, Chinatown<\/a> restaurateur and publisher Dan Tsao, said he plans to open a branch of his popular Sichuan restaurant EMei<\/a> next year. <\/p>\n Marra\u2019s was one of the last remaining links to East Passyunk<\/a> Avenue\u2019s featured role in the Italian American immigrant experience of the early 20th century. It also marks a transition for the founding Marra and D\u2019Adamo families, who say they are exploring a new location for the restaurant, which opened in 1927.<\/p>\n Mario D\u2019Adamo Jr., a grandson of founders Salvatore and Chiarina Marra and brother of co-owner Robert D\u2019Adamo, said business had dipped after the pandemic, but that wasn\u2019t the impetus for the sale. \u201cThe biggest killer was parking,\u201d he said by phone while searching for a spot Sunday. \u201cSmall restaurants can survive that; large places can\u2019t.\u201d With 160 seats, including its 80-seat banquet room on the second floor, Marra\u2019s lost a lot of business because of it, D\u2019Adamo said. <\/p>\n Robert D\u2019Adamo, 75, and cousin Maurizio DeLuca, 61, who took over ownership in 2000, declined to speak with The Inquirer over the last few weeks as word spread of the impending sale, citing their emotions. In a statement, they said they were prepared to move on with \u201cthe same love that has always defined us \u2014 just in a location that better serves our guests.\u201d<\/p>\n Mario D\u2019Adamo Jr., 71, a lawyer and deputy court administrator for Philadelphia\u2019s Family Court, sold his stake about 25 years ago but retains an interest in the Marra\u2019s name. <\/p>\n With the sale to Tsao, the building will remain a restaurant. Tsao has said he intends to renovate the building while respecting its look and feel.<\/p>\n Marra\u2019s oil-fired brick oven, believed to be one of the city\u2019s oldest, may not be salvageable, D\u2019Adamo said. <\/p>\n The life of the bricks is about 100 years and the inside is collapsing, even though an artisan patched it about two years ago. \u201cThe oil flame is so hot that the bricks are now pulverizing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Marra\u2019s backstory<\/p>\n The families of Salvatore Marra and Chiarina Daniele were baking pizza in Naples before the turn of the 20th century. <\/p>\n Shortly after the couple married, they set out for the United States. <\/p>\n Marra family lore holds that Salvatore arrived at Ellis Island in 1921 with a single dime \u2014 likely a 10-centesimi coin \u2014 which he tossed into New York Harbor so he could say that he had begun his life in America with nothing. Chiarina joined him soon after.<\/p>\n His early attempts to recreate Neapolitan pizza were discouraging \u2014 first in Brooklyn and then Chicago. He thought that the pies were lacking and blamed the ovens.<\/p>\n Back in Naples, the ovens were lined with lava bricks from Mount Vesuvius, which radiated and retained heat in a way he couldn\u2019t replicate. When the Marras moved to Philadelphia, he ordered bricks from Naples and had the oven built for their first pizzeria, which opened in 1924 at Eighth and Christian Streets in South Philadelphia. This time, the pizza tasted right.<\/p>\n In 1927, when the Marras bought a former butcher shop at 1734 E. Passyunk Ave., the oven was dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt there.<\/p>\n The neighborhood was teeming with immigrants, and East Passyunk\u2019s diagonal path through the city\u2019s rowhouse grid \u2014 historically, it was a Lenape trail \u2014 had made it a natural commercial strip. For generations, families bought their church clothes, shoes, furniture, and sundries on the Avenue.<\/p>\n Salvatore and Chiarina still lived on the restaurant\u2019s third floor after their retirement in 1947. She died in 1973 at age 73. Salvatore, in his usual fedora, was a familiar presence on the Avenue until his death in 1984 at age 89.<\/p>\n Their children, Bianca and Vincent Marra, carried Marra\u2019s business forward after Salvatore and Chiarina\u2019s retirement. By that time, Bianca had married Mario D\u2019Adamo Sr., a Marra\u2019s busboy who lived around the corner. (Their children, Robert, Mario Jr., Linda and Marlene, represented the next generation.)<\/p>\n Bianca D\u2019Adamo, known as \u201cMama D\u2019Adamo,\u201d became one of the restaurant\u2019s most visible figures. In a 1980s interview with The Inquirer, she recalled a particularly loud regular from years past: a kid named Fred Cocozza. \u201cHe\u2019d come in, stand right over there, and sing at the top of his lungs,\u201d she said. \u201cPapa would come out of the kitchen and tell him to get out. He thought it was bad for business.\u201d In 1947, he performed for 20,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl and signed a film contract with MGM as Mario Lanza.<\/p>\n In 1950, Bianca and Vincent bought the bakery next door and expanded the restaurant. Vincent Marra opened his own Marra\u2019s restaurant on Baltimore Pike in Springfield<\/a>, Delaware County<\/a> in 1954.<\/p>\n Marra\u2019s fame<\/p>\n During Bianca and Mario\u2019s oversight, Marra\u2019s began attracting the spotlight. For National Pizza<\/a> Week in 1955, Salvatore Marra was named Pizza Man of the Year. In 1977, Eastern Airlines\u2019 in-flight magazine, Pathways, cited Marra\u2019s as one of the five best pizzerias in the country. Philadelphia Magazine named it South Philly\u2019s top pizzeria in 1985 \u2014 the same year Villanova<\/a> University won the NCAA men\u2019s basketball championship. That year, coach Rollie Massimino, a regular, inspired the dish known as Rollie\u2019s ziti in white, a bowl of ziti and broccoli in garlic sauce, that remained on the menu till the end.<\/p>\n Marra\u2019s celebrity guest list read like an index of 20th-century American entertainment: Mickey Rooney, John Wayne<\/a>, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Avalon<\/a>, Eddie Fisher, Jimmy Darren, Bobby Rydell, Al Martino, John Travolta, Eugene Ormandy, Conan O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n