photograph courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
Mario DePietro in his prime (and showing off the "potatoes" in his arms).
No one who dined at Mario’s Pizza Palace — for that was the fancy name of the rather humble establishment you remember — ever forgot it. The stone cottage at 3836 Park Avenue was sheathed in handmade signs, urging patrons to “Protect Your Health NOW!” and “Eat Well and Forget Di-Gel!” Diners crammed into two little rooms and munched on baked pizza and ravioli, sipped wine from old mayonnaise jars, and were often serenaded — in Italian, no less — by the feisty owner himself, Mario DePietro.
So many stories were told about — and by — Mario that it’s hard to sort them out. He supposedly won indoor bicycle races at Madison Square Garden back in the 1920s. He personally delivered an airplane-shaped chicken to Charles Lindbergh somewhere after his 1927 transatlantic flight. And, of course, it was Mario himself who first brought pizza to America from his native Naples, Italy. And if you didn’t believe him, he would proudly display the battered metal tub he carried on his head, as he walked the streets of New York City, peddling this new kind of food.
Skeptics at his restaurant were commanded to feel the “potatoes” in his strong arms, legs, and stomach — something chefs these days rarely demand of their patrons, which I think is a shame.
What was definitely true, however, was Mario’s obsession with healthy living. “Be young, sane, and spry,” proclaimed the menus of the restaurant he opened here in 1949, “and eat Mario’s Pizza Pie.” He would usually sit down with his diners, beseeching them to stop eating greasy foods that “clogged up arteries like mud in the pipes.” For visual evidence, he nailed a bucket of nasty grease to the wall of his dining room. Sweets, he had concluded, kill dozens of youngsters every day. Hamburgers were nothing more than “cremated meat.” Carrot juice, he insisted, could perform miracles, since it “has the whole 16 elements that your body requires” and besides, “rabbits have better sense than humans.”
And if you still didn’t believe him, he would hand you a typed essay titled “Proper Foods Can Alter Our Moods.” Among other things, this interesting thesis claimed that “riots, parades, shootings, and hating police are caused by a multitude of half-starved or wrongly fed humans.”
Parades? Hmmm.
photograph courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
Mario with one of his inventions — in this case, a trash incinerator that produced no smoke. Or so he claimed.
Skeptics at his restaurant were commanded to feel the “potatoes” in his strong arms, legs, and stomach — something chefs these days rarely demand of their patrons, which I think is a shame. It would definitely enhance the entire dining experience.
As you might expect, he often became fodder for the local newspapers, and Press-Scimitar columnist Eldon Roark devoted stories to the “little bulldog of a fellow.” One time Mario invented a trash incinerator for the home that he claimed would eliminate air pollution. Assembled from pipes, a garbage can, a water hose, and all sorts of other parts, this gadget supposedly burned household waste and then filtered the ashes through a “water curtain.”
When Roark went to Mario’s to investigate, the machine just belched smoke. “But Mario didn’t get mad and kick his contraption to pieces and throw it on the junk pile,” wrote Roark. “He went to work to take out all the bugs. When he grabs hold of something, he won’t let go.” (In this case, he did let go when he never could get it to work properly.)
Mario was a popular character here, as he drove around town in an old station wagon, with his signs for good health plastered all over the back windows. But nobody seemed to be paying attention. “You can’t teach jackasses anything,” Mario complained to a reporter. “They just turn and kick you.”
But his diet for life certainly worked for him. He rode a bike all over town until he was 80, and he remained healthy until his death in 1985 at the age of 84. His little palace on Park Avenue, shorn of all the signs, became a real estate office, then a business called the Door Exchange. Today, it's home to a doctor's office.
But nothing — and nobody — would ever replace Mario.
Editor's Note: A version of this story originally appeared in our January 2001 issue.
