Driving home one afternoon, hungry, I decided a little field research would be a fine idea. I headed into Savona’s Plaza Pizza for a couple of slices. (Yes, I have the best job on Earth.) I noted the delicious fragrance, clean surroundings, and friendly service with pleasure. Then I sat down and took my first bite.
Oh. My. Goodness.
The proportions of cheese, sauce, and topping were just right. The crust was just thin enough. Everything was perfectly seasoned—in short, a pizza lover’s fantasy, but real and in my mouth.
But this was professional research, so I decided to take it one step further by calling my best friend for some pizza chat. “Yes,” she said, “if you think about peak pizza—the kind we remember from the streets of Manhattan back in the middle of last century—Savona’s is the place.”
But there’s much more to Savona’s than pizza. Even where I was, in Kingston Plaza, I could have ordered a hot or cold sub, a wrap, a chicken cacciatore dinner, or a healthy whole wheat pasta garden toss. And had I wanted to venture downtown to the waterfront—always a good idea—I could have stopped in to Savona’s Trattoria & Bar for a sit-down dinner with appetizer, salad, and a pan-seared filet mignon with my choice of toppings, served with baby spinach. There are six Savona’s branches feeding the Hudson Valley: four full-service restaurants and two pizzerias.
There are six Savona’s branches feeding the Hudson Valley: four full-service restaurants and two pizzerias.
The story began last century, when 20-year-old Emanuele “Manny” Savona arrived from Sicily to join his brothers in New York City.
“He didn’t speak any English when he got here,” Stephen Savona says of his dad. “He got a job as a mason during the day, laying brick, and a night job doing bread deliveries for a bakery out in Coney Island.” That delivery route was how Manny met Cecilia, in a bakery in Little Italy. Manny was immediately smitten with the lovely 17-year-old, herself a daughter of Irish immigrants.
“It took a little bit, but eventually she agreed to go out with him,” Savona says. “They got married and saved their money, and eventually my dad bought the Coney Island bakery.”
In time, there were four little Savonas sharing the one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment with their parents before Manny and Cecilia achieved the next chapter of the dream, purchasing a duplex in Bensonhurst.
“Then dad decided to take a ride with his business partner to see what upstate was like. The original idea was to open a bakery up in Catskill, but they stopped for lunch in Kingston. It was the early ’70s; IBM was in full swing, and Kingston was busy and prosperous. Dad was impressed. He’d never made a pizza before, but he knew all about baking, and he opened Jimbo’s Pizzeria on Albany Avenue in 1974.”
For a time, Manny commuted between Bensonhurst and Kingston before he ultimately convinced Cecilia that upstate could be a perfectly decent place to live—which took a good bit of negotiation—and moved the family to Woodstock in 1975, when Stephen was about seven.
IBMers and others were loving the pies from Jimbo’s, and eventually there were Jimbo’s Pizza outlets in Lake Katrine and Port Ewen—and then in 1977, a full-service restaurant on Schwenk Drive, now Plaza Road.
“That was when my brother and I started washing dishes, when I was around 10, and eventually making pizzas,” Savona says. “I was 10, and Danny was younger. I remember him having to stand on a milk crate to put a pizza in the oven.” In the 1990s, when his father relocated to Florida, Stephen and Danny took over the pizza chain.
IBMers and others were loving the pies from Jimbo’s, and eventually there were Jimbo’s Pizza outlets in Lake Katrine and Port Ewen—and then in 1977, a full-service restaurant on Schwenk Drive, now Plaza Road.
In the 1990s, when his father relocated to Florida, Stephen and Danny took over the pizza chain.
Savona wanted out of the kitchen and moved downstate in 2000 to see if he could break into modeling and acting, managing restaurants and tending bar at night and going to auditions in the daytime. The big break was elusive, but the big reward was not: he met and fell in love with a fellow aspiring actor and model.
“I had some fun in that business,” he recalls. “I did some soap opera work, which was great—I did a few episodes of All My Children. But I wasn’t really making any money, and we got married, and I needed to be making money.”
He was still part-owner of Plaza Pizza with his brother and mother, and made the occasional trek to Kingston. On one trip, he spotted a vacant waterfront restaurant—the former Golden Duck—and the wheels in his brain began to spin.
“I fell in love with the spot, because it reminded me of the East Village,” Savona says. “Kind of a cool, funky neighborhood. I started envisioning it as a sidewalk restaurant with tables outside, which honestly nobody was doing yet—they’ll say they were, but they weren’t yet. But I could just see the sidewalk full of tables. So I opened Savona’s Trattoria there with my wife, my first full-service place.”
That was in 2007. With Stephen back upstate (in Manny’s footsteps, he eventually convinced his wife that upstate living was worth a shot), he and Danny were soon able to coax the slightly banked embers of the Savona’s Pizza empire back into cheery flames, and it turned out that the Hudson Valley was as hungry as ever for their recipe.
“That waterfront trattoria was the first one I opened on my own, but I’d have to say my parents had set the table for me,” he says. “I made a few mistakes, but I learned. I think my mistakes were forgiven on the strength of the family reputation. And my dad having been an immigrant, we definitely had it easier than he had, but he instilled that hunger in us, that desire, that unwillingness to let anything keep you down.”
Besides hunger, hospitality was another key ingredient in the family recipe, and Savona kept it front and center. “I tell all my team members when I bring them in that it’s simple, it’s straightforward,” he says. “Your job is to make people at home; how would you treat a guest in your house? You greet them with warmth, sit them down, get them a drink and make sure they’re comfortable.” Savona’s employs 200, many of whom stay for a long time.
It wouldn’t have worked without wonderful food. (“A fantastic experience! The food was delicious, with each dish bursting with flavor and beautifully presented,” reads a typical five-star review of the Kingston Trattoria, which goes on to praise the “attentive, friendly and knowledgeable” service.) People were clamoring to take some home, so this year will see the launch of a retail line of Savona’s sauces; among other potential stockists, Savona is already in talks with Adams Fairacre Farms, and the sauces will of course be available at the restaurants and pizza shops.
Savona says he looks for “locations where I’m not duplicating what’s already there, where I feel like we can add to the neighborhood and be comfortable.” And he credits Manny and Cecilia with lighting the path toward feeding folks with love.
“My dad had the fire, and my mom is the emotional rock we’re founded on,” he says of the family brand. “I came up in it, so I know what the front-line staff deals with and what it’s like to work a sixty-, seventy-hour week. And it’s not all about the bottom line; being part of the community—we fed over 2,000 veterans this past Veteran’s Day, among other stuff we do to give back. We do fundraisers for schools, donate to lots of good causes. It’s how they raised us, and it’s who we are.”
Savona's
Trattorias:
11 Broadway, Kingston | 845-339-6800
7249 South Broadway, Red Hook | 845-758-6400
1 Collegeview Avenue, Poughkeepsie | 845-867-4505
136 Warren Street, Hudson | 518-697-3470
savonas.com
Pizzerias:
312 Plaza Road, Kingston | 845-331-4451
1090 Morton Boulevard, Kingston | 845-382-1010
savonaspizza.com
