Five years after Angelo’s Italian restaurant moved to a new building, it’s about to move again.
The restaurant, owned by Gina Fasciano-Hogan, her husband, Joe Hogan, and her father, Jack Fasciano, will serve its last lasagna at its current home at 5900 E. Central at the end of August.
The owners will then pack up and relocate to another familiar restaurant space: The former Quinton’s Bar & Grill spot at 550 N. Rock Road, which has been vacant since that restaurant closed in June 2024. (Longtime Wichitans best know the address as the former home of The Grape, which lasted from 1979 until 2003).
Angelo’s will relocate to 550 N. Rock Road. Owners are aiming for late August or early September.
(Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle)
There could be some downtime between the restaurant closing on East Central and reopening on Rock Road, Fasciano-Hogan said. But she hopes to make it as brief as possible. Angelo’s must be out of its current space by Aug. 31, and she hopes the new restaurant is ready by then or by mid-September at the latest.
The owners decided to move the restaurant, she said, because their landlords on East Central told them that they’d sold the building and needed Angelo’s move out. They launched a search for a new spot, then the landlords told them that the deal on the building had fallen through. They offered to sell it to Angelo’s owners.
By that time, Fasciano-Hogan said, they’d already found the Rock Road space, which is owned by the Zerbe family. (Morrie Sheets of Reece Nichols South Central Kansas represented Angelo’s in the deal. Zach Zerbe of Landmark Commercial Real Estate represented his family.)
The new building, which over the past decade has also been home to businesses such as Ernie Biggs, Dempsey’s Burger Pub., and Crutch BBQ, has two stories, but Fasciano-Hogan said that they’ll likely use only the main floor at first. They hope to eventually open the upstairs, perhaps for private parties.
The new space will allow Angelo’s to have much more seating: Their current spot has 85 seats, and the new one will have around 140. The Rock Road spot also will allow Angelo’s to offer outdoor seating and a private dining area, and it has two separate bars.
Angelo’s is known for serving pizza, lasagna and other pasta dishes.
(Courtesy photo)
“I feel like we’re finally in a restaurant,” Fasciano-Hogan said. “I just feel like the last couple of places we were trying to make feel like a restaurant, and this is an actual restaurant. I think our customers are going to be a lot more comfortable.”
Angelo’s will keep its famous pizzas and pasta dishes on the menu when it moves, Fasciano-Hogan said, but the kitchen also will add some new dishes, including salmon, beef tenderloin medallions and baked ziti.
Once the move is complete, the owners also plan to start opening Angelo’s for weekday lunches.
“As long as people support us at lunch, we’ll stay open at lunch,” she said.
The owners looked at many spots before finding the North Rock Road address, Fasciano-Hogan said. They signed a 10-year lease, so they hope that they’ve found their “forever home.”
One thing that’s not quite settled: the fate of the neon lion sign that the owners erected in front of the East Central spot in 2021.
They can’t move it to the parking lot on Rock Road, but they looked into having it retrofitted and put on the front of the building. The price of doing that was a bit shocking, though, so they’re still weighing options, she said.
Angelo Fasciano was the founder of Angelo’s and opened his first restaurant in 1960 a former furniture store space at Pawnee and Laura.
(File photo)
Fasciano-Hogan’s grandparents, Angelo and Anna, got their start making pizzas out of the basement of their house in the late 1950s. Sicilian-born Angelo, who worked at Boeing, would sell the pizzas to co-workers. They became so popular that he opened a small restaurant on South Laura in 1960.
The family moved the restaurant to a building near Harry and Hillside in 1961, then moved to a location across the street in 1976. The restaurant was known for its distinct pizzas, salads with pickled eggplant and homey pasta dishes. It grew in popularity and expanded. At one point, five Angelo’s were operating across the city. The family also had restaurants in Andover, Hutchinson and Tulsa.
Anna Fasciano died of complications from diabetes in March 2004. Angelo died a year later, in March 2005. Son Jack Fasciano took over the businesses, but the last remaining location at 1930 S. Oliver closed in July 2006.
In 2016, urged on by ardent fans and assisted by a Kickstarter campaign, the Fascianos were able to reopen the restaurant, choosing a tiny spot at 5321 E. Central.
The revival was a hit, which necessitated Angelo move to its current address, which previously had been home to Picasso’s Pizzeria.
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Dining and Cooking