A Lifetime A Legacy: Salvatore Avanzato

Salvatore Avanzato tossing pizza dough in 1975, and posing with son Giacomo in 1994.

Salvatore Avanzato lived a highly productive life as the rock of his close-knit family.

The longtime Woodbine resident and Sea Isle City pizza restaurant owner died suddenly of a heart attack Nov. 30 at age 72.

Mr. Avanzato’s wife Josephine and the couple’s sons Dino, Giacomo, and Joseph remember their loved one with grateful affection and deep respect. Sea Isle City residents and visitors knew Mr. Avanzato as the skilled pizza maker who, along with family members, owned and operated Azzurra Pizzeria at 50th Street and Landis Avenue. There, Salvatore Avanzato, his spouse, and three sons labored side-by-side for 32 years.

Mr. Avanzato and family sold Azzurra Pizzeria to the Deserio family in 2020.

“My father is the embodiment of the Italian-American dream,” says Giacomo.

Even at an early age, Mr. Avanzato was industrious. As a 5-year-old in his hometown of Canicatti in Sicily, Italy, young Sal Avanzato worked in his cousin’s bicycle shop. There he helped to repair bikes and deliver them to customers, his sons recall.

“European kids are more responsible,” muses Josephine, a native of Naples, Italy. “My mom taught us how to cook when we were around 9 years old.”

Salvatore and Josephine’s wedding photo, 1978.

From bicycle repair work, Mr. Avanzato next took a job as a stock boy at the Sicilian regional pharmacy. By the time he and his family migrated to the United States in 1966, Mr. Avanzato, 15, was the drugstore’s manager. While Mr. Avanzato kept a bit of his earnings, the teenager worked primarily to support his family of origin, Giacomo says.

During his high school years in Oneonta, N.Y., Mr. Avanzato went to work in restaurants or pizza shops after school hours. The dream of building his own pizzeria/restaurant business in the United States took root while working in his uncle’s pizzeria. The young, purpose-filled entrepreneur wasted no time in making that dream come true after graduating from high school in 1971. One year later, Mr. Avanzato opened his first pizza shop, the Italian Kitchen in Oneonta.

Mr. Avanzato’s future wife and her family emigrated from Naples to Queens, N.Y., in 1968. Then-Josephine

Di Sarno worked during her high school years, too. She sold goodies at the Greenwood Bakery in Queens. Romance bloomed for the pair after he spotted her at the bakery while delivering valuables from Italy to one of the shop’s owners in 1976. The Avanzatos married in 1978. Sons Dino, Giacomo, and Joseph were all born in New York.

The family relocated to Woodbine in 1985. There they built a home that was completed in 1986. Mr. Avanzato physically helped to raise it as one of the building’s framers.

“Dad was very calculated” in making decisions for the family and the business, Giacomo says. “He didn’t rush. He knew what he wanted. He had a plan.”

The Avanzatos purchased Azzurra Pizzeria from its first owner in 1991 and went to work as a team in making it their own. The business along with its name, Azzurra, suited them well, especially since the national Italian soccer team is named Azzurri, or “blues.” Azzurra means “sky blue” in Italian. The Avanzatos are enthusiastic international soccer fans, they say.

There’s a stillness around Josephine Avanzato and her sons as they sit together at their kitchen table in Woodbine. She and they are still trying to come to terms with the sudden loss of her beloved husband and father. Still, when the subject of Azzurra Pizzeria and their time working diligently together there is raised, they come to life with memories.

When the Avanzato boys first went to work with their father and mother at Azzurra in the early 1990s, Dino was 11, Giacomo was 9 and Joseph was 7. “They made a lot of boxes in those days!” says their mom. With Mr. Avanzato at the heart of it, each family member would find his or her working role within the pizzeria, jumping into different roles as needed.

Lunch break for the brothers at Italian Kitchen, left to right Antonio, Vincenzo, and Salvatore, circa 1976.

Avanzato’s first restaurant, opened in 1972 in Oneonta, N.Y.

“I was one of the main pizza guys with my dad,” says Dino. As a youngster, “Dad set me up on a little bench” to teach him to make dough and pizzas, he recalls. “I learned by watching Dad.” Sometimes they banged out 200 to 300 pizzas a day at dinnertime.

Giacomo worked as the short-order cook, preparing salads and dinners at Azzurra Pizzeria, as well as pizzas as needed. He also managed the delivery drivers. Toward the end of their years at Azzurra, Giacomo and his wife Sandy ran the business.

Though he did some prep work in the kitchen, Joseph kept things moving at Azzurra’s front counter, “mostly taking orders” and enjoying chats with customers, he says.

Salvatore and Josephine with grandchildren Diego and Giulia on Father’s Day 2023.

Josephine worked as Azzurra Pizzeria’s cashier, the staff scheduler, and the person who “cashed out the delivery guys,” she says. Not only that, she created homemade desserts like New York-style cheesecake, cannolis, and rice pudding for the restaurant. Josephine’s other signature dishes included lasagna, meatballs, eggplant, and arancini (Italian deep-fried rice balls). “We were known for our rice balls,” she adds, and her sons nod in agreement.

Family members were joined by 5 to 10 extra employees during the summertime. One employee proclaimed, “You both are like machines!” to Salvatore and Josephine. Their mom was nicknamed “Josephine the Machine” in the shop, her sons say with smiles.

“Dad was in the shop all the time,” says Dino. “We were all there all the time,” especially during the summer season. An average summertime workday in the pizzeria ran for 12 hours, and longer on Saturdays and Sundays when Azzurra stayed open until 3 or 4am to accommodate the bar crowd, followed by an hour of closing duties. Family members would then be back at work the next day at 10:30am to open shop at 11am.

All note the high levels of adrenaline required to keep things running smoothly during times when Azzurra was packed with hungry people. “Dad was always good under pressure. He was patient,” says Dino. “He handled the stress well.” And, “that’s hard to do when you have 350 slips [customer orders] hanging,” Josephine adds.

The family’s hard work paid off. Azzurra Pizzeria flourished. In time, the Avanzatos invested in adjoining real estate and their business grew from 500 square feet to a 3,500-square-foot space filled with a newly renovated, handsome diner-shaped pizzeria and restaurant.

But it wasn’t all work and no play for Mr. Avanzato and his family. They enjoyed celebrating holidays with extended family, going to concerts, and vacationing together. During Sea Isle City’s offseason, they traveled to Italy for family visits and sightseeing, or tropical locations or places of interest in the United States like Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tenn.

“Music was his passion,” says Giacomo Avanzato of his dad’s interests. As a self-taught guitar player and singer, Mr. Avanzato always entertained the children at large, extended family gatherings during which the youngsters would sing along and dance to his music.

Dino, Giacomo, Sal, Josephine and Joseph Avanzato show off their Florentine pizza and Italian rice balls.

Along with artists like Elvis and the Beatles, Mr. Avanzato admired Italian singers Salvatore Adamo, Toto Cutugno, Andrea Bocelli, Nino D’Angelo, and Massimo Ranieri. His television-watching preferences were found on two channels broadcast from Italy.

Mr. Avanzato kept himself quite busy around the house, as well. “Sal said, ‘You be the supervisor and I will do all of the work,’” his spouse says with some sadness.

Mr. Avanzato worked in his garden, where he grew tomatoes, arugula, lettuce, zucchini, squash, eggplant, and figs from the fig tree. There was grass to cut, with occasional help from his sons, and landscaping to maintain. Plus, there was red and white wine to make, a skill learned from his father-in-law, Giacomo Di Sarno , and passed along to posterity. And, visible from the kitchen, there were the fire pit and the fish pond in a lovely grotto that he built, in need of care.

“Dad would say, ‘I can only sit so long,’” Joseph recalls.

Grandchildren Giulia, 6, and Diego, 2, will miss time with “Nonno” in his garden, checking the fish pond, picking figs from the tree and more, Giacomo laments.

“My dad was incredible,” Joseph declares. “He made things look easy.”