Owner Nick Azzaro shows off his new dining room.(Staff photo by Samantha Sciarrotta.)
Papa’s Tomato Pies owner Nick Azzaro watches chef Mike Hardwick prepare a pie at the restaurant’s new Robbinsville location. (Staff photo by Samantha Sciarrotta.)
Papa’s Tomato Pies owner Nick Azzaro moved his business from Trenton to Robbinsville in August.
After more than 100 years in one place, sometimes it’s just time to move on.
Nobody knows that better than Papa’s Tomato Pies owner Nick Azzaro. The restaurant moved to 19 Robbinsville-Allentown Road in Robbinsville in August, closing the doors on its Trenton era after 101 years in the city, 68 years of them spent at the intersection of Chambers and Roebling streets.
Azzaro had been thinking about relocating for over a decade. Trenton was changing, and he decided it was time to get out.
“I had to find the right place, the right time,” he said. “It’s been in the works for years. I still was doing well in Trenton. In the last couple of years, it got noticeably worse. I made a decision. It was either retire or move. It was hard to give it up. It was hard for me to move. I lived there. I had the deal, but I waited until it got really bad in Trenton. People just were scared to come to Trenton.”
He placed offers on other locations, but eventually decided on 19 Robbinsville-Allentown Road, which Azzaro dubbed “Robbinsburg.” Much of his old clientele moved from Trenton to the Hamilton/Robbinsville area, so he decided to join the “exodus.”
“All of my customers moved,” he said. “They all came to Hamilton or Robbinsville. It’s like when you go bear hunting, you go where the bears are. We followed the people. I came out here to accommodate them, more or less.”
Before the move was complete, though, he needed to do one thing. Azzaro and his staff moved the original oven bricks, one by one, from Chambersburg to Robbinsville. The new space is equipped with a larger, more modern oven, but it’s still filled with the same old bricks.
“The stones were in the other ovens for 40 years,” said Ted Merias, a 12-year Papa’s employee. “All the guys got together, and we moved them. Everybody’s happy. We have no complaints.”
They also pick up five gallons of Trenton water every morning to keep the recipe as true to the original as possible. Azzaro said it makes all the difference.
Joe Papa, Azzaro’s grandfather, founded Papa’s in 1912 on South Clinton Avenue. He moved to Butler Street and eventually settled in at Chambers and Roebling in 1945. It has been family owned and operated for the entirety of its run; Azzaro’s parents, Abie and Tessie, took over after Papa passed away in 1965. Nick Azzaro started working at the restaurant when he was 14, and started running the place four days a week at 16. Abie retired in 2005 at age 80.
“I had to drag him out,” Azzaro said. “He was there, but he didn’t do much. He just physically could not do it anymore.”
Will somebody have to drag him out?
“No,” he said. “I’m going to run out of here. It’s really a lot of work. I’m fortunate enough that I can retire. I just chose not to. You can’t just do it for a job. I enjoy doing it. You either have to like to do it or you can’t do it. It’s not a job. It’s a life.”
Business hasn’t slowed down since the move. If anything, it’s been busier. Azzaro said it was overwhelming at first—he and his staff were adapting to a new space while trying to accommodate a constant flow of eager, hungry customers.
“It’s still strange,” he said. “I can’t find stuff. Things are not working correctly. It’s like the first day of school, but then you have people coming in and wanting to eat as we’re trying to figure out what’s going on. We’re getting a handle on it, but it’s not 100 percent yet because we’ve been inundated with customers.”
Azzaro said he appreciates his new customers, but part of him still misses the old neighborhood.
“The neighborhood was something else,” he said. “You’ll never see that again. You knew everybody. I used to come outside on the corner to get some air, but I had to leave. I couldn’t stay outside because I waved at every car that went by. You knew everybody.”
Jodi Stout, who waitressed at Papa’s on and off for 35 years, said that was the case for as long as she can remember.
“It felt like a family to me,” she said. “I really don’t even know where to start. I would get a kick out of the locals. You would see a lot of them grow up and have kids of their own. People from the Mansfield retirement home came every Thursday. They always took up two tables. I loved that.”
Despite the nostalgia for Trenton’s past, she feels relocating was the right move.
“I definitely think it was a good thing at this point,” she said. “After awhile, I didn’t feel comfortable going to Trenton. My husband and I would still go there every Thursday up until they left, and we were OK with it. I grew up there. But it was starting to get to the point where people didn’t want to make the trip. He needed to get out of there.”
Though the move was long and arduous—the full transition took over four months—Merias said it was all worth it.
“It was a great decision,” he said. “We’ve been doing very well. We’re very busy. It’s really nice to see people happy and still coming, old customers and new customers. We should have done it 10 years ago.”
Many claim that Papa’s is the oldest pizza restaurant in the country, though the folks at Lombardi’s in New York City might disagree. The restaurant opened in 1897 but closed for several years, which Azzaro said disqualifies it from contention.
Either way, he’s proud of his restaurant’s title. He said tons of “pizza crazy” tourists and locals visit Papa’s from all over the country. He’s had people travel from places like Connecticut, Canada, Hawaii and Chicago specifically to try his pie. A couple from Texas even popped in after seeing Azzaro on “Pizza Cuz,” a program on The Cooking Channel.
“Since I’m the oldest pizza restaurant in the United States, it was hard to give it up,” he said. “People come here because of that. Nobody else can say that. It’s worth so much. I appreciate all the business, all the people. The response is really nice. Everybody likes it. I think the new place is so cute.”
Bricks and all.
Papa’s Tomato Pies is located at 19 Robbinsville-Allentown Road in Robbinsville. Phone: (609) 208-0006.
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