Terry Lettieri is a key figure in American pizza history, even if you don’t know her name. Now the pizzeria she owns with her husband and brother-in-law is up for sale.
It’s only taken nine-tenths of a century.
Salerno’s Café is one of those Old Forge, Pennsylvania pizza institutions that thrives pretty much on its reputation for quality alone. It has no website to speak of, no Instagram presence, no claimed page on Yelp. As for its Facebook page, well, it has one, but it’s clearly not a top priority.
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Yet, 90 years after its founding, the family-owned and -operated Salerno’s remains a prime go-to spot for Old Forge-style trays and cuts in a city that calls itself “the Pizza Capital of the World.”
What will become of Salerno’s Cafe now? Lettieri hopes someone will take it past the century mark and further still. But she and her husband, Michael, have a good reason for letting it go. “I’m 75,” she told the Scranton Times-Tribune. “I’ve been here since I’m 25.”
According to the Times-Tribune, Lettieri handles much of the cooking, while her husband, Michael, manages the finances. He’s 78 years old.
“We have no choice,” Lettieri said. “It’s just too hard for me, because I make the dough every day, I do all the pasta. They’re all homemade, and it’s just too much work at my age, you know what I mean? I’ve been doing this for 50 years. It’s just time.”
“It’s a heartbreaker, believe me,” she added. “We don’t have much of a choice.”
The asking price for Salerno’s Café is $875,000. That includes the pizzeria’s building, an upstairs apartment, the building next door—which also houses three apartments—and the parking lot. Plus one more vital asset a prospective buyer should keep in mind: “I’d give them all my recipes for all the pastas, the tripe, my spaghetti sauce,” Lettieri said. “That’d come with it because we’re noted for the pizza and homemade pasta.”
In an interview with the Times-Tribune, Old Forge-style pizza authority and influencer Jim Mirabelli, founder of NEPA Pizza Review, hailed Salerno’s as “a really cool old-school joint [that] gives you vibes harkening back to simpler times.”
“It was always a standout in the Pizza Capital of the World,” he added.
After the news about the restaurant’s sale broke, Mirabelli hightailed it over to Salerno’s Café to shoot a video for his social media accounts. He ordered two cuts, including the traditional “red” pie (tomato-based sauce and cheese), and noted, “The sauce is what gets me on the red because it has a little zip to it, a little tang. Classic. Also, that crust has a beautiful crunch around the edge. Just a classic, really. The whole place is a classic.”
When Mirabelli took fellow Instagram influencer Fernando Greco, the New York City pizzaiolo and consultant known for his Argentinean-style pizza, on an Old Forge tour, Salerno’s was on the itinerary. “We got a red and a white,” Mirabelli told the Times-Tribune. “The double crust pizza is very unique. You don’t get that style of pizza outside of this area, and Salerno’s does make some of the best double-crust white in the area.”
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In a message to PMQ Pizza on Instagram, Mirabelli said he’s “hoping this legendary spot gets a new owner to carry on the tradition.”
Lettieri, of course, agrees. As she told the Times-Tribune, “I’m here a long time. I raised four children, have 12 grandchildren, and they all at one time worked here. It’s kind of sad, you know?”
