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Family and food ran Scarsella's Pizza and Carry Out
YOUNGSTOWN
In the kitchen of Victoria Scarsella Battista’s Canfield home hangs a framed collage of photos featuring people young and old, tall and short, of all backgrounds and ethnicities.
To most, it would look like a collection of strangers. But not to the woman those people called Mama Vickie.
“That’s my family,” said Battista, 79.
In fact, they are some of the customers she served at Scarsella’s Pizza and Carry-Out, the Italian eatery she owned and operated for 33 years at 8252 Market St. in Boardman.
It was that familial connection Battista felt with her customers and her business that made it hard for her to walk away when she retired at the end of last year. But it was also what got Mama Vickie into food service in the first place.
She is the daughter of Luigi and Mary Grace Scarsella, who immigrated from Italy and found a home on Youngstown’s East Side.
But Mary Grace, when pregnant with Vickie, returned to Italy to care for Luigi’s father, and Vickie was born in 1935.
While there, World War II broke out in Europe, and Vickie said she watched her mother care for injured American soldiers, at great risk to her mother’s own safety.
Vickie said she always admired Mary Grace and the classic Italian cooking she served to family, friends and neighbors. As a girl in Italy, something clicked for her, she said.
Ever since then, “I followed my mom’s footsteps, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the sick and elderly,” Vickie said.
So when Vickie, her two sisters and Mary Grace moved to America in 1945, it wasn’t surprising that she followed her mother into what became a generations-long endeavor in the restaurant business.
When Mary Grace and Luigi opened Scarsella’s Restaurant on the corner of Market and Pyatt streets in 1957, Vickie and her sister Teresa Kozar were at their side, as the family served classic spaghetti and meatballs, wedding soup, pasta fagioli, homemade pizza and other Italian specialties. The days were long, often lasting from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., she said.
Eventually, the restaurant grew and the family opened a new store at the corner of Market Street and Florida Avenue in 1968.
The family business carried on, and the familiar red-checkered tablecloths still draped the tables where customers still enjoyed their favorite dishes.
Scarsella’s remains open at 4151 Market St. in Youngstown.
In 1981, Vickie decided to use her experience to open her own takeout restaurant on Market Street, not knowing it would become a landmark.
The transition was tough, but Vickie had her family to call on. Mary Grace and Vickie’s sister Teresa helped get the restaurant on its feet, and soon a separate eatery, Scarsella’s Pizza and Carry-Out, was up and running.
And it didn’t stop for the next 33 years.
Like the old store, Vickie’s new place served the Italian staples. And just like the old store, family and business went hand-in-hand.
Her four children helped out at Scarsella’s, which was often open 12 hours a day, six days a week.
“It was a home,” Vickie said.
And that home attracted many more family members over the years, Vickie said. It garnered a loyal and devoted customer base that only grew over the years, she said.
One of those customers was Denise DeBartolo York, whose favorite dish was a toss-up between Mama Vickie’s linguini with red clam sauce and the eggplant parmesan. She said she had visited the shop at least once a week since its first days in business.
“It was just like our neighborhood gathering space,” said York, who worked only three blocks away from the restaurant.
“I watched her daughters grow up and have their own families,” she said.
Over the years, Vickie and her customers developed their close personal ties in a space that became far more than just a restaurant.
“Customers came in for food with their kids,” she said. “We smiled, cried and prayed together.”
But eventually Vickie realized it was time to retire and close the pizza shop, a decision which triggered an emotional couple of months for Vickie and her customers who continued to pour in and say their goodbyes.
Vickie and her family said it would be a bittersweet retirement because she will have more time to spend with her own family, but she would sorely miss the extended family that she had built through Scarsella’s Pizza and Carry-Out.
“I want to thank all the customers,” she said. “I couldn’t have survived without them.”