NEW YORK, N.Y. — Mezzaluna, the small Italian trattoria that has fed families on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City for 42 years, will serve its last meals on Sunday, Nov. 1, with the doors set to close for good at 8 p.m.
Founder Aldo Bozzi, now 86, decided not to sign another 10-year lease at 1295 Third Avenue. Staying would also have meant a long and expensive renovation, including a rebuild of the famously cramped kitchen, which could have kept the restaurant dark for months while bills piled up and no money came in. Rising costs of doing business in the city added to the pressure.
This is not the first goodbye. The restaurant was supposed to close in March, but a flood of support from the neighborhood persuaded Bozzi to ask his landlord for more time. More than 2,100 people signed an online petition to save it, and lines wrapped around 75th Street, with some diners waiting three hours for a table.
Bozzi has long built the menu around quality, going so far as to import olive oil from Tuscany rather than settle for what he found on supermarket shelves. He says the place now serves three generations of the same families, including the children of regulars who first came in as high school students, and many of them already know their usual orders by heart.
Even with the closing date set, Bozzi has said he is not ready to retire. For Lenox Hill, the loss adds to a run of departures by longtime neighborhood haunts as the area shifts toward luxury condos and chain coffee shops.
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