A Piece of Pacific Palisades Is Resurrected in the Canyon
By Laurel Busby
News & Information Editor
Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria has been reborn as a little red trailer in Canyon Square.
The restaurant, a mainstay in Pacific Palisades’ Marquez Knolls neighborhood for 41 years, was one of the many businesses lost in the Palisades Fire. The three owners, Mercedes Pellegrini and her daughters, Vanessa Pellegrini Henriques and Sabrina Pellegrini Kalaydjian, began considering new locations a couple of months later.
They considered Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Santa Monica, and even scorched portions of the Palisades before Henriques ventured to the former Tallulah’s on Entrada. Realtor Frank Langen, Chris Holland, and the landlord showed Henriques around the restaurant, but she quickly realized that its remodeling needs would be immense.
The owners of the new Vittorio’s, Vanessa Pellegrini Henriques (left), Mercedes Pellegrini, and Sabrina Pellegrini Kalaydjian. Photo: Levi Langen
“I think Frank saw the desperation in my eyes, and he told me about the Airstream” in Canyon Square, Henriques said. “We walked over there and, for maybe three hours, I just watched how the Canyon moved and worked. Everybody knew everybody, and there was this little community. They talked to each other and walked their dogs and were getting coffee and they had meetings. It was this unofficial town square. I thought, ‘This is good. This is what I want. This is what I need.’”
She and Langen kept talking, and she began exploring how a restaurant in a trailer might look. The Canyon Alliance President Doug Suisman made some renderings of how the location in the parking lot adjacent to RustiCoffee could be envisioned, and, on Sunday, Aug. 24, Vittorio’s will have a “soft” opening at around 5 p.m.
The menu will inevitably be smaller. Due to the tight space, they can’t offer 150 items like their former location, but Henriques said they will bring back many favorites, including the popular garlic rolls (“addicting, little balls of goodness”), pizzas, specialty pastas, such as lasagna, baked pasta and penne pink, and the chopped salad (with a dressing so tasty “you can almost drink it”).
Canyon resident Stephanie Kanan, whose massage and acupuncture business Oasis Palisades was in the same building as the former Vittorio’s, said “I am so excited for them to come to my own neighborhood…. Those garlic knots are off the chain.”
Vittorio’s will also offer catering and sandwiches, such as chicken parmigiana, meatball, and a vegetarian caprese, while Henriques’ mother, who immigrated from Brazil, will provide her desserts, including cheesecake, chocolate cake, and chocolate mousse pie.
The desserts were actually the family’s original way into the restaurant business. In about 1980, when her daughters were children, Mercedes Pellegrini began selling cakes in the San Fernando Valley and eventually she would pack her daughters into a 1979 silver Datsun and trek the sweets to restaurants around the city.
Meanwhile, Vittorio’s original owner, Giovanni Mazzola, who had been a gangster back in New York, came west after a stint in prison. He started the restaurant in the Palisades in 1984 and named it Vittorio Ristorante because, in prison, his very large cellmate used to yell “Vittorio! Vittorio!” as a term of endearment whenever Mazzola walked down the cell block.
“The guy thought that this slender little Italian mobster was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen,” Henriques said. “Giovanni told him, ‘When I get out, I’m going to buy a restaurant and I’m going to name it Vittorio’s, and that’s exactly what he did.’”
A few years later in around 1987, Mazzola wanted to move back to Italy, and he suggested that Pellegrini should stop selling cakes and become the new owner of Vittorio’s. She wasn’t immediately entranced with the idea, but, in 1989, she decided to give it a try for six months. She never looked back.
Henriques, then 11, and her younger sister were put right to work. They would buss the tables, put out utensils, and generally help out from 3 p.m. to midnight during their summer vacations and on some weekends during the school year.
“I loved it,” said Henriques, who now has a six-year-old daughter, Olivia, who loves to help too. “I learned the business literally from the bottom up, which shaped my working life, my work ethic. I grew up with everybody I know now. I love the people. I love the community. I love the neighbors. I love the stories…. When the restaurant burned, that was the hardest part, the saddest part… losing the people, losing our community, not seeing everybody every single day.”
Henriques relishes the chance to again be part of a tight-knit community. She has rehired eight of her former employees, and she looks forward to again playing a part in her customers’ lives, ranging from being a part of their celebrations to serving them nightly meals.
She and her family also have no plan to eventually reopen in their former location.
“This is where we are and where we want to be,” she said.
Vittorio’s will be open at 169 W. Channel Rd. from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. every day except Tuesday. Contact (310) 459-9316 for more information or catering orders.
