Marra’s Italian Restaurant was just two years shy of celebrating its 100th anniversary. But on Sunday, November 30, the beloved eatery’s oil-fired brick oven cranked out its last pizza, and the doors slammed shut for good.
The problem, at least according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, is not what you’d expect.
As it turns out, Marra’s had seating for 160 guests and enough business to remain open. What it didn’t have was a parking lot to call its own. And that, oddly enough, led to its demise after 98 years in the same location, the owners said.
Fortunately, a comeback is still possible.
“The biggest killer was parking,” Mario D’Adamo Jr., the founders’ grandson and brother of co-owner Robert D’Adamo, told the Inquirer. “Small restaurants can survive that; large places can’t.”
The Inquirer reports that word of the space’s pending sale had been spreading over the past few weeks, but the owners wouldn’t agree to an interview, “citing their emotions.” In a recent statement, they said they plan to keep Marra’s going with “the same love that has always defined us—just in a location that better serves our guests.”
Apparently parking will not be a pressing concern for a Szechuan restaurant concept called EMei, which will reportedly take over Marra’s spot on East Passyunk Avenue.
Italian immigrants Salvatore and Chiarina Marra founded Marra’s in 1927, and the business has remained in their family for generations. According to family lore, Salvatore sailed with fellow immigrants into Ellis Island in 1921 with just one dime in his pocket. And he tossed that into New York Harbor so he could one day tell his kids and grandkids that he came to the U.S. with nothing at all.
But the Marras turned nothing into something special at Marra’s, as the pizzeria built up a guest list that ranged from John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Mickey Rooney to John Travolta and Conan O’Brien.
Since the pandemic, the founders’ descendants have reportedly been scouting for a new location with better parking. But that’s not the only problem they’ve been dealing with.
D’Adamo said Marra’s oil-fired brick oven is barely hanging on after 98 years of non-stop action. The bricks, which were imported to Philly from Naples in 1924, have a lifespan of about 100 years, he pointed out, and “the oil flame is so hot that the bricks are now pulverizing.”
D’Adamo grew up in the restaurant space and was saddened to plate its last pizza on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. “It became part of your DNA,” he told the Inquirer. “We used to close at 2 or 3 in the morning. My whole life, I heard the jukebox playing Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett. I still go to bed late because of that. Some of my earliest memories are my father coming up the steps, tired, smelling like the restaurant, folding his apron over the banister.”
He added, “Other families watched football. We watched cooking shows. Everything in your mind connects back to the restaurant.”
