Paradiso’s Deli is reborn as Palermo

Tony, Theresa Paradiso to greet customers on opening day

Nearly a year after closing their Paradiso’s Deli, San Jose restaurant legends Tony Paradiso and his sisterin-law, Theresa, will return to Auzerais Avenue to greet customers old and new.

Their deli has been taken over by another longtime restaurateur, Renato Cusimano, who operated Palermo Ristorante on South Second Street for nearly 20 years. The renovated space on Auzerais will be called Palermo Street Foods, and opening day is Wednesday, Nov. 1.

The Paradiso family will be there at 11:30 a.m. for lunch service.

Tony and Theresa won’t be the only reminders of the original Paradiso’s. The family passed along their recipes to Cusimano, including the ones for the popular meatball sandwich and the ravioli with meat sauce. Tony’s mother taught him how to make those dishes when he was just a boy; she had learned them from her mother, who brought them over from Tricarico, Italy.

“We will continue the legacy for Mr. Paradiso,” Cusimano said.

The Palermo legacy will be in evidence too: The colorful Sicilian cart that customers will remember as an antipasti bar returns to serve the same purpose here.

Paradiso’s had been a deli for nearly 50 years — since 1967, when Tony and his brothers Richard and Louis converted the family’s grocery. For years, the deli served the employees of the Del Monte Cannery nearby until that plant closed. They passed up offers to sell the property for condos and townhouses, and instead made customers of those new nearby residents for the past decade.

COURTESY OF CITY OF SAN JOSE San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo stops by the old Paradiso’s Deli — which reopens today as Palermo Street Foods — to congratulate Tony Paradiso on his many decades in the restaurant business.