Jolt Country

Giuseppe's is pretty much top of the line pizza.

Whatever Happened To ... Veltre Bakery?
Looking back: At the Veltre Bakery on Parkway Ave. Dave Veltre and some of the workers that remodeled the front of the bakery over night with out Dave even knowing it. Left to right: Lucille, Anthony, Dave Donofrio and owner Dave Veltre; May 19, 1995.
You can find pizza shops all over the place nowadays, even at department stores and gas station mini-marts.

That wasn’t the case when Veltre Bakery opened in 1932. The west-side Rochester business specialized in bread but soon came to be known for what were called their “tomato pies.”

Veltre’s was a pizza pioneer in the Rochester area. It’s hard to say if Veltre’s was the first locally to serve pizza. That designation is highly disputable, but what added to the appeal for Veltre’s was the way the bakery cooked its bread and pizzas in a massive, coal-fired brick oven.

The original shop was on Parkway, just off Lyell Avenue in the heart of an Italian neighborhood. Veltre’s later opened other pizzerias throughout Monroe County.

A classic sign on the wall outside of Veltre's Bakery.
So, Whatever Happened to …Veltre’s? First, some history.

John Veltre started the business with his wife, Genevieve. John Veltre, an immigrant from Italy, learned his trade at Bond Bakery on North Street. He took over an existing bakery on Parkway, and it had an enormous oven.

“We got there at 4 or 5 a.m. to start the fire with wood before adding coal,” said their son, Angelo “Sonny” Veltre. “It was very primitive, with the coal and no thermometer. We could make 300 loaves at a time.”

Sonny, now 89, eventually took over the business. Veltre’s was truly a family affair, with uncles and aunts, siblings and children all pitching in. “We lived in the house in the front,” Sonny said.

Residents in the neighborhood flocked to Veltre’s for the bread, which Veltre’s also supplied to local restaurants such as nearby Roncone’s. The brick oven had been there since the 1880s, said Dave Veltre, one of Sonny’s sons, who later ran the family business.

“It was a neighborhood oven. It was huge,” he said. “The pores of the brick gave it that crispy taste. Our oven was part of the building — it was built in.” His brother, John, described it as “big as a garage” and said, “It was an Italian neighborhood, and a lot of people came right from Italy. We had a lot of walk-in business.”

Theresa Zicari, of Webster, was one of those regulars. As she noted in a Facebook post, she went to Veltre’s three times a day in the early 1960s.

“At 1 p.m., the bread would come out of the ovens,” Zicari wrote. “You could smell the wonderful bread all over the neighborhood. You had to go buy some. (Then, it was) back at supper for more bread. After supper, you went for pizza

Ah yes, the pizza. Sonny Veltre said the early ones were small and simple, topped with nothing more than sauce, grated cheese and oregano. “People didn’t even know what pizza was,” he said. They soon found out and came back for more. And more. Veltre’s at first called them tomato pies or tomato kuchen.

They became so popular that Sonny’s dad brought them around to neighborhood taverns and sold them for 10 cents apiece. Veltre’s would stock up pizza pies in a truck and set up shop around town, Sonny said.

“We used to bring 100 small pizzas … and park in front of Hickey Freeman at lunch time,” he said. “People would come out and get 'em for lunch.” Brides and grooms regularly ordered pizza for their wedding receptions then, Sonny said.

The pizzas got bigger sometime after World War II. The Veltre Bakery business got bigger, too. Pizza shops opened on West Ridge Road in Greece, on Dewey Avenue near Ridgeway Avenue in Rochester, on East River Road in Henrietta and in Churchville. Those shops all had stone-lined gas ovens, Dave Veltre said.

Those shops also closed before the flagship operation on Parkway, which continued to be the heart of the business.

Veltre’s Bakery became an institution that fit in perfectly with Rochester’s version of Little Italy. Off Parkway, where he grew up, Sonny Veltre remembered, “That street was all Italians. On Sundays, they were all boiling water for macaroni. It was a different time.”

By the time Dave Veltre took over about 1990, it was a different neighborhood than the one the Veltres had known. Crime was rampant, and many of the old Italian families had moved to places like Gates.

Veltre’s continued as a neighborhood landmark. Tour groups stopped in, and a movie was partially filmed there in the 1980s.

The business finally closed in 2000. Dave Veltre followed a new career opportunity and Veltre’s Bakery ended its nearly 70-year run. The family sold the building, which is still standing with the brick oven still intact. The place has been used for storage in recent years, Sonny Veltre said.

The memories created there also remain intact, even if the wonderful aromas are gone. “We really did it the old way,” Dave Veltre said. “It was a work of art. It was quite a profession that we preserved.”

The Chinappi family was leaving Seabreeze Amusement Park after a family outing when they found the future standing directly in front of them. Across the parking lot was a vacant restaurant with a big "for sale" sign in front of it.

The new location of Giuseppe's will have a thin crust with an appealing chew.
"This is a sign," Marciano "Marcy" Chinappi remembers saying. The retelling may sound a bit like Captain Obvious, but he was instead envisioning the potential of what that building could become.

Chinappi is one of several extended family members that run Giuseppe's, an Italian restaurant that dates back to 1927, when Giuseppe and Josephine Petrillo opened a small restaurant across the street from Eastman Kodak Co. headquarters on State Street.

The second location of Giuseppe's will be across the street from the carousel at Seabreeze.
(An interesting turn of events: Giuseppe Petrillo's brother, Nick, opened Petrillo's Bakery back in the 1920s. Petrillo's recently closed, leaving parishioners from St. Cecilia Church scrambling for breads for their annual St. Joseph’s table. Who came through and baked the 350 loaves the church needed? Yes, it was Giuseppe's.)

Giuseppe's moved locations a few times over the years, and now is in a strip mall at 50 Spencerport Road in Gates. And for the first time in the history of the business, it is opening a second location, in that vacant restaurant the family saw on Culver Road in Irondequoit.

Over the years, Giuseppe's has grown and evolved. The bakery end of the operation makes breads that it wholesales to area restaurants, and the restaurant's menu has grown to more than 150 items, including subs, pasta dishes, pizzas, specialty sandwiches, Italian entrées, Friday fish specials and more.

Maintaining that size of menu is tough, Chinappi said. As a result, the Irondequoit operation will be pared back to a smaller menu, closer to what his great-grandparents started on State Street.

"To be able to go back to our roots is pretty cool," Chinappi said.

The pizzas will have a fresher, artisanal approach with a Neapolitan-style thin crust. The sourdough-style pizza dough will be cold fermented for at least 48 hours to give the crust a tangy flavor and an appealingly chewy mouth feel.

A clam pizza will be on the menu at the new location of Giuseppe's.
Geared toward quick service, the menu will highlight pizzas and subs. Orders will be placed at the counter.

Like the Gates location, the Irondequoit store will sell bread, but breads will be made in the Gates location. Only focaccia will be baked in Irondequoit.

The building at 4615 Culver Road in Irondequoit is getting a facelift and Chinappi is hoping for an early summer opening. If all goes according to plan, outdoor seating will be available; there may even be a quick service outdoor bar.