Scavenger Hunt!
We are going to start this week’s story about Nick & Joe’s Pizza, which is celebrating 50 years serving customers in the Westmont Plaza, with a challenge that some out there may find a bit cheesy, but may save you some dough!
Those of a certain age may recall how, back in the good-old “Clover Days” of the Westmont Plaza, Nick & Joe’s offered coupons on the tops of their pizza boxes. EVERYONE who ordered a large take-home pizza would cut those coupons off the lids and store them in a special spot in the kitchen, probably with others, bound by rubber bands or a clothes pin. It was just what you did, because when you saved up ten, you could cash them in for one free large cheese pizza.
During our trip down memory lane reminicing with the current co-owners of Nick & Joe’s, Sergio Alvarez and Antonella Suglia, the two agreed to offer a special challenge to Memory Lane readers: anyone who can produce one of those long-ago coupons, cheese grease on the back and all, can redeem it for one free large cheese pizza.* So check your junk drawers and coupon folders, there must still be a few of those cardboard gems out there somewhere!
*One coupon per customer. And be sure to mention this article and let them know your name and phone number and snap a picture for us of you enjoying your pizza. We may want to include you in a follow-up story!
Italian Delight
It was October 6, 1975, when brothers-in-law Pietro Nicola “Nick” Suglia and Onofrio “Joe” Tanzi purchased the former Italian Delight restaurant in the Westmont Plaza. The two had married sisters, Giacomina “Jackie” and Rosa Gaudiuso, and at the time, the couples each had apartments on the third floor of the South Building at HaddonView, which overlooks the plaza. Later, the Tanzis purchased a house of their own in town while the Suglias settled in Audubon.
Nick, who passed away in 2020, was born in Mola di Bari, a charming seaside town in southern Italy, on the upper heel of the Italian “boot,” along the Adriatic Sea. When he was just three years old, his family moved to Buenos Aries, Argentina, and later to Brooklyn, New York. Upon arriving in Brooklyn, he could speak fluent Italian and Spanish, but not a word of English.
Joe grew up in Brooklyn. Coincidentally, Jackie and Rosa were also born in Mola di Bari, although they did not know Nick’s family at the time.
“Nick and Joe met when I was dating Joe,” Rosa explained. “My sister Jackie and Nick were already married.”
Joe, who had been a printer in the army during the Vietnam War, had just returned from Okinawa and was looking for a printing job but had no luck. Nick, who had a restaurant background, offered him a job making pizza.
“The only thing I knew about pizza was how to eat it!” he laughed while recalling his early days in the pizza biz. And he still knows how to eat it…
Dining and Cooking