Dino Pace might have sold the Jamestown, New York pizza shop bearing his name—Pace’s Pizzeria—in 2018, but his warm and loving presence is still felt there, at least in part because he’s still going strong at one year shy of 100.
In fact, the retired pizzaiolo partied for his 99th birthday at Pace’s on Friday, March 20, where he was surrounded by longtime friends and admirers.
At the age of 11, Pace immigrated from Sulmona, Italy (in the Abruzzo province) to the U.S. with his family in the 1930s, fleeing the rule of dictator Benito Mussolini. He founded Pace’s Pizzeria in 1953. That first shop was in Lakewood, New York, and two additional stores followed in Jamestown. But by 1963 the restaurateur decided to focus all his attention on a single Pace’s Pizzeria location—at 549 West 3rd Street.
After 65 years of running the business, Pace finally sold it to a longtime employee, Joe Town, in 2018. Not only had Town worked at the pizzeria for 10 years, his mother, sister, aunt and uncle had all been Pace’s employees at some point over the years, according to The Post-Journal. Pace and Town grew so close, they even had their own corner booth where, presumably, the deal for the sale was hatched.
Even after exiting the business, though, Pace remains a beloved figure.
Server Jaclyn Bush shared a warm memory of the pizzeria’s founder with The Post Journal. “When I first met Dino, I had been working here for six months to a year, and Dino walked past everyone else in the room, and he came up to me and hugged me like he knew me, and that was the sweetest thing,” she recalled.
Numerous social media comments and online reviews make it clear that Pace fostered an environment and experience that left customers with happy and long-lasting memories.
Pace has also taught Town, his successor, a few life lessons over the years. For Pace’s 98th birthday in 2025, Town wrote that Pace “doesn’t look” his age and “his physical and mental abilities do not show it….He has had a life full of experiences and made a lot of friends along the way. I talked to him today, and he said that he has plans to live beyond 100, God willing!”
In that same post (below), Town shared “a few of the many words of wisdom”—or “Dinoisms”—that he’d picked up from Pace:
