It’s a heartbreaking thing when your favorite pizza shop closes. It must be equally enthralling, then, when it opens back up.
Vento’s Pizza, located in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, closed last winter when owner Al Vento Jr. announced his retirement. After 67 years in business, Vento’s Pizza appeared to have served its final pie.
That recently changed, as a new ownership group purchased and reopened the restaurant. According to CBS News Pittsburgh, the restaurant is a source of great nostalgia for its surrounding community, and that’s one of the biggest reasons new owners Mederbek Toktosunov and his sister, Aigul Kubatbekova, wanted to purchase and re-open Vento’s Pizza.
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“All the customers love Vento’s and the Vento’s family and Vento’s foods so much,” said Ibadat Kyzy, Vento’s new general manager and wife of Toktosunov. “So, it is a big responsibility to us. We are trying our best so that the food looks and tastes the same way that it has been for many years.”
The new ownership is determined to make Vento’s food as similar to how patrons remember it as possible. Menu highlights include the same pizza, hoagies and burgers patrons loved in the past.
“Vento’s has been a staple of this area for a long time,” said Ramon Williams, a longtime Vento’s customer. “And most people I’ve talked to are glad that it’s back. I am a Vento’s fan. So we’ll give it a shot. That’s all we can do.”
The group now running Vento’s said he has the goal to uphold what always made the pizzeria great while modernizing it to a certain degree. It will be expanding the takeout business, and revamping the website is part of that formula.
One of the challenges for Vento’s will be to replicate the community-driven feel of the place that had existed for decades. Vento’s was home turf for “Franco’s Italian Army,” a fan club named after Pittsburgh Steelers’ Hall of Famer Franco Harris. The fan club was founded by Al Vento Sr., who invited other members of the Italian-American community to cheer on Harris and the Steelers.
