Business

‘He Has Always Been a Kind of Mentor’: Chef Returns To Volunteer at Cherished Pizza Place

By |

Lorenzo Colella has known Paul Mauk since he was a kid growing up on Forest Street. 

The eatery his parents had opened in 1967, Joe’s Pizza, sat for most of its life just two doors down from Mauk’s Tequila Mockingbird, and Colella would come to see the family friend as a mentor. Colella’s mother Annunziata passed away two years ago, his father Giuseppe in May. Soon after, he lost some help at the pizzeria, now on Locust Avenue, and consulted Mauk, who had sold Tequila last summer after a successful 25-year run. Mauk volunteered to help out, and in just a few months, he’s made an indelible mark at Joe’s, primarily through encouraging Colella to trust his own talents as a chef and in tweaking a pizza recipe that’s been feeding New Canaanites for decades. “One of the main things he does is motivating me mentally, and making me realize I have a lot of capability and what I do is unique,” Colella said.

News

Annunziata ‘Nancy’ Colella, 66, Loving Wife and Mother, Longtime New Canaanite

By |

Annunziata Colella, age 66, a resident of New Canaan for over 45 years died Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016 at Norwalk Hospital with her loving family by her side. Born Nov. 5, 1950 in the Marcanise province of Caserta, Italy, she was the daughter of the late Pietro Gaudino and Filomena Musone. She was the wife of Giuseppe (Joe) Colella. Annunziata, better known as Nunzia or Nancy came to the United States in 1971 and immediately joined her husband Joe at their small business, Joe’s Pizzeria in New Canaan.

Business

Love, Laughter and Lasagna: At the Table with Nancy Colella

By |

[This is the final installment in a four-part series “Matriarchs of Main & Elm,” published in December 2015 and profiling the women behind New Canaan’s great business families.]

Annunziata Colella—known to locals by her Americanized name, “Nancy”—on Tuesday afternoon sat at her long family dinner table in the kitchen of this brick exterior ranch-style house on Main Street, the family’s home since she moved in with a young daughter and husband in 1974. She rested her hands atop a poinsettia tablecloth set with fresh yellow lilies, the doorway connecting to the living room beyond adorned with garlands draped around columns, potted poinsettias on side and coffee tables, tall candleholders in the form of angels placed on the floor, and large framed family photos on a fireplace mantle, beside Christmas cards and stockings. Complimented on her holiday décor, Nancy shook her head and said in the Neapolitan accent that she’s had since she arrived in the United States—and started learning English—in 1971: “Oh, thank you, but this is nothing. I’ve hardly done anything.”

On the contrary. Resilient, warm, intelligent and resourceful, Nancy Colella—wife of Giuseppe “Joe” Colella, founder of Joe’s Pizza—for nearly a half-century has conducted herself at home and at work with a sense of pride, responsibility and commitment that’s transformed a mom-and-pop pizza shop into a cherished New Canaan fixture.