End of an Era: Romas Family Sells ‘New Canaan Pizza’

New Canaan Pizza, owned for more than 40 years by the same family, has been sold and will undergo a renovation, those associated with the downtown restaurant confirmed.

Closed since Sunday for an extensive renovation, the Greek-style pizza place at 53 East Ave. is to be reopened as New Canaan Pizza & Taqueria and will use the same ovens to continue serving up its signature pie, according to Tommy Romas, a familiar face behind the counter who owns the business with sister and brother-in-law.

The sale marks the end of an era in New Canaan.

“We appreciate everybody’s business and we are going to miss everybody,” Romas told NewCanaanite.com. 

“We are sorry that we did not officially announce it [the sale] at the time of the closing, but that was because of a management agreement. I want to thank all of our loyal customers for several years.”

(Romas said anyone who wants to reach him directly can contact newcanaanpizza@hotmail.com.)

Michael James, a New Canaan High School class of 1992 member who had been known back then as ‘Michael Venneri,’ worked at the pizza place for four years as a teenager.

“That was the after-school, in the fall hangout,” said James, now a New York City resident and owner of The Michael James Group, a boutique lifestyle advisory firm. “Go there, get a pie, get an RC Cola—everyone loved the RC Cola. It was a classic family business. We learned a little Greek history, the intricacies of a Greek family a la ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding.’ That movie brought back for me so much of the inner workings of a Greek business. And the Romases—from the parents to John to Porta to Helen and Tommy—they were like family to me. They gave me a job when I really needed one.”

James, who made pizza, sauces and salads at New Canaan Pizza, said the Romases were family not only to him but all his friends who would come and pick him up after work.

“Still, my grandmother, who is at Waveny Care Center, that is her favorite treat, is the small pie from New Canaan Pizza,” he said.

New Canaan Pizza & Taqueria is to reopen in about two months, officials said.

According to a building permit application filed Dec. 22 with the town, $50,000 in interior renovations are planned for the 420-square-foot take-out space. Plans filed by Norwalk-based architectural firm Gill & Gill show that the existing pizza ovens and hood will remain, while a new counter and floor tiling are installed. New equipment including an electric fryer, gas griddle, range and worktable also will be installed, the application said.

NCHS ’90 grad Lisa Difulvio—now Lisa Pia, a parking enforcement officer in town—said she started working at New Canaan Pizza at age 13.

“I still have a key to that place,” Pia said.

She called the sale of the business “bittersweet,” saying she was happy for the Romas and Tabikis families, though they’ll be missed.

“I’m actually very sad about the whole thing,” she said when asked for her thoughts on the sale. “They’re like family to me.”

Dayton Ogden, a third-generation New Canaanite who grew up with the NCHS class of 1990, said the pizza place’s phone number—966-3610—is “burned into my brain” more than his friends’ or parents’.

“That number has always put me in a good mood,” Ogden said.

“The product never changed in my entire life. It was the same person, the same smell when you walked in, the same conversation with the guy behind the counter. And it was great.”

Asked what his favorite pie has been, Ogden said ‘The Schwinn Special,’ a well-done pizza with extra sauce. He also would sometimes get sausage, peppers and onions.

The pizza was unique in its taste because of the “contrasts” in the pie, Ogden said.

“It was salty and sweet, tangy with the sauce, and crispy and chewy, also. So they blended a couple of different elements and I just loved it. It had an ‘it’ factor in its flavor. You could always tell a New Canaan Pizza. It always smelled and tasted differently. It’s hard to differentiate bread and cheese and tomato sauce, but they did it.”

Originally opened in 1967 as ‘Village Pizza,’ the cozy space in the rear lot off of East Avenue near the Cherry Street intersection has operated continuously as a pizza place for nearly a half-century.

The DiBernardi family owned and operated the original business, which Joe Colella (later of Joe’s Pizza fame) purchased around 1969, according to Romas.

Colella would open Village Pizza on Forest Street in about 1971 and later rename his spot Joe’s Pizza, which operates today around the corner on Locust Avenue and is run by son Lorenzo.

The original Village Pizza was renamed ‘Glenbrook Pizza’ for a time and then finally ‘New Canaan Pizza.’ In 1973, Romas’s great-uncle Peter on his mother’s side acquired the business, and then in 1981, his own immediate family took over. Romas himself started full-time at New Canaan Pizza in 1983 or so.