50 Years Strong: Hell’s Kitchen’s Favorite Pizza Joint

Vito Accetta, Sacco's owner's son and 14-year employee, chatting with customers.

With only a few feet between the counter and the wall, you may have to squeeze by a small family to get a seat in the back. However, as local residents proclaim, the effort is worth the reward; this pizza is too special to walk and eat for the first time.

Sacco’s Pizza’s claim to neighborhood fame is their signature thin crispy crust and gooey cheese; their family sauce recipe – rich and sweet, fresh and filled with herbs. In 1996, all of this was available for only $1.35 a slice. Today, its $2.50 price tag is average in the working class area.

New Yorkers are serious about their pizza. Each neighborhood boasts it’s own best slice in the city. Residents of Hell’s Kitchen, current and past, young and old, local students and workers, will all attest that Sacco’s serves the best pie in town.

A combination of top-of-the-line ingredients, high quality appliances, and a sauce recipe

Brand new, top-of-the-line ovens.

that has gone unchanged for half of a century has enabled the family owned Sacco’s Pizza to continue to serve a consistently delicious slice since cousins Dominic Accetta and Joe Cerasulo took over the business from their cousins, who moved back to Italy, over twenty years ago. Located on 9th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets, on an avenue famous for eclectic ethnic eateries, this pizza spot stands out for consistently serving a fabulous pie. Named after the town of Sacco in Italy, where the family and their sauce recipe from, Sacco’s has been a staple in the community since the family originally acquired the restaurant in 1960.

The back of the restaurant; the seating area, consisting of seven tables and sixteen chairs. Dominic Accetta, owner, is hard at work in the back room..

With no typical type of customer, 14-year employee and son of Dominic Accetta, Vito Accetta says “Our customers are diverse; young, old, pretty much everyone. Just look around and you can see that.” The customer base is in fact quite diverse, from school kids to senior citizens, of all races, shapes, and sizes, a good representation of the increase in diversity in the neighborhood.  When Dominic Accetta first started working there, he remembers, “Everyone was poor. Rents were cheap.”  Now most of the original community is deceased or has moved away, and new condos are being built constantly. The area is growing wealthier and more affluent as the years go by, and this is also visible to the workers of Sacco’s through their customers. When Vito Accetta started working with his father and cousins 14 years ago, “the neighborhood was mostly Irish and more family oriented, now it’s mostly yuppies and young kids from Cali,” he says with nostalgia. With such an assorted mix of customers, Vito Accetta believes that the best way to keep everyone happy is to treat each customer with the same respect as the next.

The employees at Sacco’s believe that their key to longevity and success is their wonderful

Load up on condiments and conversation at the counter.

pizza and their family atmosphere. The staff is friendly with all of their patrons, which Dominic Accetta says “makes people feel at home. They come in and we know their order. They feel comfortable and they come back.” With the economy forcing many families out of the neighborhood, a lot of their regulars have moved away. They do come back to visit though, one notable person calls the store and places an order, travels from The Bronx to pick it up, and eats it on his way home, showing the lasting impact Sacco’s makes on it’s customers.

Owned and operated by a handful of men, all relatives of one another – or employees and friends for over fifteen years that feel like relatives – Sacco’s stands out from other pizza joints. Often people are told never to combine business and family, because when the two mix, the outcome can be bad. At Sacco’s, the men work together comfortably, though sometimes it can get tough. “A partnership is worse than marriage.” Dominic Accetta says, with is cousin and partner, his cousin, in mind. “You have to respect your elders,” he continues. “You go to my town, and even people just from the town, even if you don’t know where they come from you call them Uncle out of respect. We’re like that here. We have respect for everyone.” This is how they treat their co-workers and their customers at the pizza place.

Cardboard taped to the side of the oven for safety, after renovation; the same safety method used before the remodel.

Sacco’s customers were comfortably familiar with the restaurant’s 1950’s atmosphere, with linoleum wall paneling, big red-laminated booths, and a window counter for people to order from or stand at and eat. During the last two weeks of July, however, Sacco’s went through some major renovations. The interior of the store was remodeled and redecorated, which Vito Accetta says made him “Uncomfortable at first, like starting a new job,” but now that he is used to it he really likes it, pointing out that they have more storage space and room to work. “People like the renovation, but miss the old look,” he says. Erica Breslow, a 23-year-old local resident, who has lived around the corner from Sacco’s her whole life, has preferred their pizza to other local shops since she was a child. “I came here after school all the time growing up, and it’s always been this good.” After the renovation, there had been some local chatter about the pizza tasting different. “It didn’t taste quite the same for a few weeks after they re-opened,” Breslow recalled. “The crust wasn’t as crunchy, or it was a little burnt.” Vito Accetta explained that it takes time to get used to new ovens, and Breslow confirms this, saying, “They’re back to normal now. Still serving the best slice in New York.”

Sacco’s has been a staple in the Hell’s Kitchen community for fifty years, and the family plans on being there for a while. A new, long-term lease was recently signed, preparing them to reign as the local pizza champion for years to come.