Friday, June 14, 2013
Village Pizza celebrates 30 years in Wethersfield By ERICA SCHMITT STAFF WRITER
Volume 53, No. 23
Erica Schmitt | Staff
Athansios “Art” Tsombanos, who along with his brother, John, owns and operates Village Pizza, recently celebrated the iconic restaurant’s 30th year.
from John and Leo Rotondaro, who had just opened it a few months prior. In 1993, they moved next door into the former A&P Supermarket to gain more 50 Cents kitchen and dining room floor space. During the move, their dad passed away. You’ll still find either Art or his brother John, now ages 56 and 52, working hard in the kitchen seven days a week. Many times they’re See VILLAGE, Page 2
Alex Pugliese, 9, of Rocky Hill, for the second consecutive year, organized Alex for Alex, a lemonade and bake sale fundraiser. With the help of local businesses, her school, family and local firefigthers, she raised more than $1,000 for Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a non-profit group dedicated to eradicating childhood cancer.
Making a stand Rocky Hill 9-year-old’s lemonade stand raises more than $1K for childhood cancer non-profit By ERICA SCHMITT STAFF WRITER
ROCKY HILL — It’s not often a child’s humble lemonade stand becomes an outdoor dessert shop and attracts a large
Live Mariachis
group of firefighters, who in turn let kids check out their fire truck. This particular lemonade stand also happened to raise $1,025 over the course of its fourhour run this past Sunday on
Parsonage Street. But none of that money will go into 9-yearold Alex Pugliese’s piggy bank — it’s all being donated to childhood cancer research.
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Evidence of a dedicated pizza house owner: he has to sit down and calculate his age on a meal ticket because he hasn’t had time to think about anything but olive oil and tossing dough for the last three decades. That’s how long brothers Athansios “Art” and John Tsombanos have been in business at Village Pizza, Old Wethersfield’s favorite, oldest (and only) pizza joint. “This used to be the center of town when we started; the town functioned here in Old Wethersfield,” Art said Monday while serving up a plate of his handmade twisted bread with a new bottle of Greek olive oil he was saving for a special occasion. They were teenagers when they moved to town from Limnos, Greece in 1975 and in 1983 they bought the Main Street shop