Longtime Bloomfield restaurant to close
Last day for Del’s Bar will be May 2
Del’s Bar and Ristorante DelPizzo will close May 2, ending the DelPizzo family’s threegeneration legacy in Bloomfield.
“It was time to go, time to retire,” Marianne DelPizzo, who, with her brother John and mother, Josephine, owns Del’s, said Thursday. They sold the building, at 4428 Liberty Ave., to Herky Pollock, an executive vice president with CBRE.
Mr. Pollock had marketed the building for two years with an asking price of $1.2 million. He ended up buying it himself for an amount he would not disclose.
“We’re in discussions with many restaurants, but we’re trying to find someone who has an iconic restaurant or wants to create one there,” he said.
In 2012, the Food Network’s “Restaurant: Impossible” crew swooped in to carry out its mission of rescuing failing restaurants.
The two-day, $10,000 makeover “kept us alive,” Ms. DelPizzo said. “Everything worked for a while, but there are so many new restaurants, and they’re fabulous. I’m happy about that. I’m happy for Pittsburgh.”
On the Facebook site “If you’ve lived in Pittsburgh a long time, you remember…” many people weighed in with criticism of Del’s food and others expressed regret about the closing, writing, “Bloomfield will never be the same.”
Ms. DelPizzo defended Del’s food but acknowledged the trend away from heavier, hearty fare.
“The city is growing trendy and young,” she said. “Our restaurant is not very young. It was good, old food and that’s not
what everybody wants anymore. We have had a decline for the last three years. But there was a time when people went to Del’s before a hockey game or after a football game.”
A staff high of 75 has shrunk to about 30 employees in recent years, she said.
“Restaurant: Impossible” interviewed diners before and after the makeover, airing compliments after and less charitable comments before. One person called Del’s “a little grandma-ish,” and another said the gnocci tasted like clay. The DelPizzos graciously accepted the fate of change.
After crews tore out old carpet and replaced dated chairs and overly homey decor and changed the menu, the show’s chef, Robert Irvine, said, “We turned an old Italian restaurant into a fashionable family bistro.”
Ms. DelPizzo’s grandfather Berardino owned and operated a grocery store with a small restaurant on Larimer Avenue before he and his sons bought the Liberty Avenue building 65 years ago. Marianne and John’s parents, Dino and Josephine, took it over from him.
“My mother ran the place after my dad died and I started working there the day I graduated from Duquesne,” Ms. DelPizzo said. “I’ve never been off a day. We were there at night, weekends, holidays. I want to go now while I’m still young enough to do something else.”