42nd Street Pizza Inducted into Pizza Hall of Fame
NEW YORK (PRWEB) December 19, 2018 -- 42nd Street Pizza has been inducted into the Pizza Hall of Fame, which celebrates America’s oldest and most beloved pizza restaurants.
Created by PMQ Pizza Magazine, the world’s authority on pizza, the Pizza Hall of Fame, located at http://www.PizzaHallofFame.com, pays tribute to the rich cultural history of American pizza and honors the perennially popular U.S. pizzerias that have been in business for 50 years or longer.
After emigrating from his homeland of Greece Louie Gritsipas, owner of 42nd Street Pizza, landed New York City in 1958. After learning the ropes of pizza prep from his uncle, by 1965 42nd Street Pizza was open. He taught me little by little,” Gritsipis recalls. “Coming here with no English, no money, still I did it.”
Gritsipas indeed embodies the American Dream, but he’s also a walking example of another key American trait: resilience. . With his location established in then-rough-and-tumble Hell’s Kitchen, he recalls that drugs, prostitution and violence ravaged the streets in the ’60s and ’70s. Later after Mayor Rudy Giuliani took a hard-line approach to cleaning up the city, Gritsipas was offered millions to vacate his pizzeria. But he held firm, declining the offer and sticking to his rigorous work schedule.
“What am I going to do with the money?” he asks. “I’m happy with what I have, whether it’s one dollar or 500. I have my health. I work 16, 17 hours a day and didn’t go to a doctor for the first time until I was 65!”
Today, he faces skyrocketing costs, strict health codes and ever-increasing competition—but believes that his old-school focus on from-scratch food and family-style service keeps his modest outpost thriving.
Conceptually, the Pizza Hall of Fame has existed for nearly 10 years, since PMQ publisher Steve Green inducted Lombardi’s Pizza in New York on November 1, 2005. The Pizza Hall of Fame website was launched in October 2014 as part of National Pizza Month. All inductees have been featured in the “Pizza Hall of Fame” section of PMQ’s print magazine.
“Pizza is such an integral part of the American experience,” Green said. “We wanted to commemorate its role in our culture. Every pizzeria in the Pizza Hall of Fame—and each one that will be inducted in the future—is a local landmark. These pizzerias are more than restaurants—they are institutions in their communities.”
Visit http://www.PizzaHallofFame.com to learn more about the Pizza Hall of Fame. For more information about PMQ Pizza Magazine, visit http://www.PMQ.com.
Heather Wilson, PMQ Pizza Magazine Inc, http://www.pmq.com, +1 (662) 234-5481 Ext: 137, [email protected]
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