AVALON – As an excavator worked quickly on Friday, Oct. 25, demolishing the building that was home to Via Mare Ristorante, cars slowed, some stopped, and people stood on the sidewalk and watched.
In Avalon, where redevelopment is omnipresent, there is nothing particularly remarkable about a demolition. Rather, it was what would soon be missing from the corner of 23rd Street and Ocean Drive that caused so many to pause and reflect.
“It was like dinner at grandma’s house,” Giulia Perricci, who opened the restaurant with her husband, the late Vito Perricci, said in an interview Monday, Oct. 28.
And these grandparents could cook.
The improbable success of two Italian farmers who immigrated to America as young adults was something many of their regulars admired in them. But it was Giulia’s infectious spirit and love of food and family that forged an even more intimate connection between her and her customers over the 34 years they operated in Avalon.
From the day the Perriccis opened the restaurant – the walls were full of family pictures and signed glossy photos, with notes from celebrities Vito Perricci had cooked for, like Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti – their personalities were front and center.
Via Mare did not open for the summer of 2024, and the property was sold by Giulia Perricci to the developer Thomas Welsh and one of his daughters in September, according to the Herald’s property transfers report.
Welsh, one of the most active residential builders in town, told the Herald in an interview Sunday, Oct. 27, that he plans to build a duplex there.
Welsh also developed houses at the former sites of the bar Jack’s Place and Tonio’s Pizzeria and the next-door Seafood Shack, other Ocean Drive businesses that have closed in the past 10 years. He said he’s gotten a lot of flak for that, but pointed out that in each case, the business on the lot had closed prior to the sale, the owner wanted to sell, and if he didn’t buy it, it would still have inevitably gone residential, as that use is now allowed by zoning regulations and other builders were interested in the property.
The trend of businesses and especially restaurants closing and being replaced by houses has been a worry to many. Reacting to Via Mare’s demolition over the weekend, hundreds took to Facebook groups to react.
“So sad! We hope it’s not more condos filling that space! We NEED places to dine, shop and recreate on our beautiful island,” wrote Carol Scott.
“At this rate, by 2030, there will not be any businesses left on the island. Very sad to see,” Keith Michael posted.
With the zoning in that part of Ocean Drive now allowing residential development and the Dune Drive business district being redeveloped with high-end condos above the storefronts, concern has grown over the future of the town’s restaurants.
Although Black Cactus recently opened in a former real estate office and Il Posto took over an expanded space that was Brian’s Waffle House, there haven’t been any new restaurants opened in the new style of storefronts below luxury condos that are taking over Dune Drive.
Condo owners and associations have actively tried to block restaurants and prefer to live above retail or office space, not having to deal with smells, noise and lots of trash.
Avalon Mayor John McCorristin said he was out of town and would be available to discuss the matter when he returns.
Dad “a master chef”
Giulia Perricci worked as a blackjack and roulette dealer in Atlantic City after moving to New Jersey in 1979 with her husband, who became chef at Capriccio in Resorts Casino. Their arrival in Atlantic City followed stops in Atlanta and Miami while working for Omnia Hotels, after arriving in New York City from Italy when she was 21.
She said they had never heard of Avalon but were looking to open a restaurant with the $10,000 they scraped together. They’d seen an ad in the newspaper in 1989 for the space that was formerly Avalon Pizza and rented the space at first; they were open year-round, Giulia and Vito each working 12-hour days seven days a week in the summer.
After spending the day cleaning the place herself and prepping ingredients, when the doors opened at 5 p.m. Giulia Perricci said she would serve tables, seat customers, help in the kitchen and even sing Italian songs, which were amplified throughout the dining room from a speaker and microphone.
Their children were also front and center and worked in the restaurant for most of their childhoods, after school and in the summers.
“My Dad was a master chef,” Mario Perricci, one of Giulia’s sons, said in an interview. “My Dad was the mastermind of the whole thing. But don’t get me wrong, my Mom is a machine. She’s a machine, dude. She’s like three workers. I call her The Machine and stay out of her way.”
Mario said he began working as soon as Via Mare opened when he was 10, Avalon’s second-youngest maître d’ when his parents opened the place. He lost that title to his late brother Angelo, who was just 6 then but, like Mario, dressed in a suit and stayed in the front of the restaurant to greet customers.
Some days, Mario said he and Angelo would be sent by their father to neighboring Stone Harbor to pass out flyers to people who were waiting for a table outside Marabella’s, a popular restaurant with a similar traditional Italian menu.
“We would say, ‘You don’t need to wait in line anymore. You can come to our new restaurant,’” Mario recalled. “The owner would chase us away. But we went back.”
And the people kept coming back to Via Mare, too. Giulia is now 70 years old and said she made the decision to close because she had a hard time getting staff in recent years, and the building needed expensive renovations.
“It was tough for me. All I could do is so much. So, I decided I’m going to retire. The business needed a lot of work on the building. It was old,” she said.
It wasn’t an easy decision to close, and she used to go to the restaurant sometimes after it closed and cry, she said.
It will be the customers and the ability to work with her family that she said she will miss most. And a number of those customers who expressed themselves on Facebook said they will miss her, too.
“Breaks our hearts and our stomachs!” Elizabeth A. Beste posted.
“Via Mare was number 1 on my list,” Jeffrey C. Paul Sr. wrote. “Nobody [else] will ever do softshells the way they’re supposed to be done. Sautéed in white wine garlic butter!”
Contact the reporter, Shay Roddy, at sroddy@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 142.
