A long-running New Jersey pizza institution is now closed after being seized by the state for alleged nonpayment of taxes, according to news reports.
DeLorenzo’s Pizza was renowned for its Trenton-style tomato pies for nearly 90 years. According to NJ.com, a seizure notice, dated March 11, has been posted by the state’s Division of Taxation on the front door of the beloved restaurant at 147 Sloan Avenue in Trenton.
A spokesperson for New Jersey’s treasury department confirmed that “the property was seized for failure to comply with New Jersey tax laws,” NJ.com reports.
In a follow-up story published on March 14, NJ.com reported that DeLorenzo’s space will be taken over by a cannabis dispensary. The news site also noted that, according to the minutes of a Hamilton Township Planning Board meeting held on February 20, DeLorenzo’s lease was set to expire in July and that the new tenant, Vision Cannabis, was helping DeLorenzo’s ownership find a new space at that time.
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DeLorenzo’s has made no announcement about the closure on social media or on its website. However, a Facebook post dated January 24 alluded to scuttlebutt about the pizzeria’s possible demise. It read, “The rumor that DeLorenzo’s on Sloan Ave. is closing its doors are completely false!! Case closed!”
DeLorenzo’s Pizza was founded by New Jersey’s best-known pizza family, whose legacy dates back to the late 1930s. That’s when Italian immigrants Pasquale and Maria De Lorenzo and several of their sons opened their first restaurant, DeLorenzo’s Pizza (with no space in the family name’s spelling), and started building a legend.
Pasquale and Maria had a dozen children altogether, and one of them was Rick Sr., who, along with two other brothers, started running that family business while their male siblings served in WWII. A second DeLorenzo’s opened in 1961, then Rick Jr. relocated it to Sloan Avenue in 2013. That’s the restaurant that has been closed.
But there’s another famous pizza joint with the De Lorenzo name: De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies, opened by Pasquale and Maria’s son, Alexander “Chick” De Lorenzo in 1947. Chick eventually passed it on to his daughter, Eileen, and her husband, Gary Amico. Then their son, Sam Amico, opened another location in Robbinsville in 2007, and his parents eventually retired and closed the original store for good.
For the record, De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies remains open in Robbinsville and has an outpost in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Yes, we know—it’s a little confusing. We can tell you with certainty, however, that De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies is a member of PMQ’s Pizza Hall of Fame.
