For nearly 70 years, Mazza’s Restaurant — founded by Joe Mazza, the son of Italian immigrants — was a fixture on West High Street in downtown Mount Vernon. 

The restaurant closed in 2008. But a decade later, three of Joe Mazza’s grandsons, Tony, Mike and Travis Mazza, decided to reopen in a new location: 11578 Upper Gilchrist Road in Mount Vernon. They kept the same ambience and many of the same items on the menu, including the famous Mazza’s salad and spaghetti and meatballs.

Almost every day, customers dining at the new restaurant will recount their memories of Mazza’s, grandson Tony Mazza said.

“It’s one of the classic things about our place — the stories and history, all the good times that have been had,” he told the Mount Vernon News. “For many years after the restaurant closed, people would tell us how they missed the place.”

While the restaurant kept many of the classic menu items, it recently began offering a new item: pizza.

For more than a year, the brothers studied how to make the best pizza.

“We experimented with five or six different styles of dough,” Tony said. “We did a lot of testing to come up with something that is just amazing. The Neapolitan-style dough is what we landed on.”

The brothers also worked to perfect the sauce, the mozzarella cheese and the toppings — including a premium pepperoni and Mazza’s meatballs.

“Our meatballs are made from a recipe that goes back 80 years,” Tony said. “We actually have one pizza that has our famous Mazza’s salad on top of it.”

The key to good pizza is using only the finest ingredients, he added.

Just as the brothers were working on developing their new pizza offering, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the popularity of pizza as a comfort food only increased.

“Our to-go orders tripled,” Tony said.

The restaurant will bring piping-hot pizza right out to your car.

“We already had pizza in the works, but COVID-19 definitely changed the landscape,” Tony said.