MOUNT VERNON — Joseph Mazza Sr. drove into town one day in 1939 in his battered ’36 Chevy and parked on West High Street to get a haircut. While spending his last 50 cents in the barber shop, Mazza looked through the window and across the street at the bus station and the small diner called New York Lunch located next to it.
Joe Mazza saw his dream. After 15 years of working for DuPont in his native West Virginia and another three years spent supervising a mattress company in New York, Mazza had a dream of finding a place in Ohio to open a restaurant and bar. Now he was looking at it.
After his haircut, Mazza crossed the street and talked to the counter’s owner, Curly Makis, about buying the place, and the New York Lunch counter became the Terminal Cafe. Initially, Mazza would take orders, run across the street to buy the meat on credit from the butcher shop, then return to pay for it after the diners paid their bill. It was a precarious start, but the restaurant took hold, and within the next dozen years, Joe’s brothers — Tony, John, Albert and Frank — would all join in the operation of the restaurant. Soon it became known as Mazza’s Restaurant, and for the next 70 years it was a fixture of downtown Mount Vernon, and an important part of community history.
Saturday night, that history, or at least the current chapter of it, will come to a close as Mazza’s Restaurant closes its doors.
This comes as neither a desperate move nor a rash one, said restaurant owner and manager Mike Mazza Jr.
“This was a family decision,” Mazza said, adding that for many family members, it has been like a death in the family. “I feel like I’ve been going to my own funeral, all week.”
The Mazzas have decided that now is the prime time to close the doors of the restaurant, before things get past the manageable point. To that end, they are inviting the public to visit them Saturday night for a last-night celebration. The Mazzas plan to have some family photos on display, reflecting the restaurant’s history, as well as drink specials to mark the historic occasion.
“We’d like to thank the community for supporting the restaurant for so many years,” Mazza said, adding that he and his family will be staying in the community and growing with it.
Mazza said that, in the end, three things are making it impossible for them to continue the current operation. First, increasing expenses, from fuel surcharges to the rising minimum wage, have taken a toll. Second, the recent smoking ban has both lessened the number of customers and reduced the amount of time some current customers spend lingering after dinner.
“Multiply those couple of drinks they’re not having anymore by a handful of people everyday,” said Mazza in explaining the long-term impact of the legislation. “It adds up.”
Third, and in many ways the most frustrating, the Mazzas have been trying to battle with an aging building. Mazza said he estimates the age of the building as about 150 years. In addition to questions of inefficiency, the maintenance on such an old building has come to represent more and more of the operating costs. The building will be put up for sale.
But this might not be the end of the history of Mazza’s Restaurant in Mount Vernon.
Although Mazza hopes to take advantage of this lull to return to school and finish his degree, perhaps leading to a career in teaching and coaching, he said the family may very well regroup and return with a new operation in the future; ideally in a new, smaller building with lower overhead costs, perhaps in the busy Coshocton Avenue shopping district.
Past articles in the News have mentioned how popular Mazza’s Restaurant was during World War II, when it featured a teen night every week. After the war, Joe was joined by his brother, Tony, in 1945, after Tony’s service with the Seabees ended. John Mazza, who had served in the Philippines during the war, joined them soon afterward. Frank, another brother involved in the early years, pitched into the operation in 1952 after four years of successful coaching, including leading a high school team to a national championship with a 63-4 record. A fifth brother, Albert, known to everyone as “Babe,” also joined in around that time. One of Joe’s proudest moments was in 1961, when, as president of the Ohio Restaurateurs Association, he was invited to President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
The next generation took over in 1979, when Joe’s son, Mike Mazza Sr., began managing the restaurant, with help from his brother Joe Jr. Mike’s son, Mike Mazza Jr., began working in the kitchen of the restaurant washing dishes at the age of 11, in effect growing up there. Although Mike Jr. has run the operation since his father’s passing in 2002, many family members keep involved in the daily operation of the place, including Mike Jr.’s brothers, Travis and Tony.
“I think this corner will keep being part of the revitalization of downtown,” Mazza said. He encouraged residents to keep patronizing locally owned businesses.
The restaurant has seen a colorful list of celebrities over the years, including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Alan Alda, Ronald Reagan, 1954 Heisman Trophy winner John Lattner, the rock band Guns N’ Roses, John Glenn, Jerry Springer, Carole King and Sam Wyche, among others. It has also served for many years as a popular meeting place for county Democrats, and countless companies and families have used banquet rooms for special occasions.
The good times there won’t soon be forgotten.
“I’m thankful for the relationships with customers and the friendships I’ll be taking with me,” Mazza said.
