Business has been good for Massimo Andretta — but it could be better.
Customers at Massimino’s, his Main Street pizzeria, often tell him they’d like to host functions there, but there just isn’t enough space.
So he bought a tenth of an acre across the street in 2008 for $50,500 with plans to build a larger restaurant, including a banquet space on a second floor.
Since then Andretta has been waiting for the right time to put his plans into action. He’s decided that time is now.
Judging by a spate of recent business openings up and down Main Street, it’s hard to disagree.
Last month he showed the Valley Indy around the new space with his daughter, Anna, who works at City Hall. Mayor David Cassetti is his brother-in-law.
A native of Naples, Italy, Andretta’s story echoes those of the thousands of Italians who settled in the lower Naugatuck Valley.
Working in kitchens in Italy since the age of 14, he arrived stateside in 1994 with a dream to open up a business of his own.
The dream would become a reality 10 years later with the opening of Massimino’s on Main Street.
Faithful customers have been patronizing the business ever since
He said he’s stayed open using a simple rule he learned from four decades working in restaurants: if you keep your customers happy, “it should be very good.”
His daughter noted that’s the biggest reason he’s moving to a bigger space across the street.
“We’re just giving the customers what they wanted,” she said.
The foundation of the new building was poured last summer, and workers recently finished the wooden framing. Andretta says he hopes to open in the late summer.
The new space will total about 3,400 square feet with room for about 70 diners in the restaurant space on the first floor, and a banquet room on the second floor.
Andretta said he wants to make the new space a bit more upscale while still keeping the same “homestyle” he said customers appreciate about his current restaurant.
“We don’t want to go crazy,” he said.
He said right now his employees are all family members, but that he hopes to hire up to 10 people when he moves to the new building.
Lots Of Options
The new restaurant will be the latest in a series of new places to eat downtown.
Two doors down the Bangkok Room, a new Thai restaurant, is poised to open soon. Next to that is Copper City Bar and Grill, which opened in 2015.
And on the corner is Crave, an Ansonia institution since 2007, which expanded in 2014.
Walk down Main Street from there and you’ll run into a new food truck across from the post office before arriving at the intersection of Bridge and Main streets to find Lulu Pazzo Italiano in the space formerly occupied by Antonio’s.
In the same shopping plaza is Warszawa, a new Polish restaurant, next door to DiGiovanni’s, an Italian cafe that opened in 2014.
Across the street Thigh High Chicken will open “any day now,” according to a banner in front of the business — in the space next to Eddy’s Bake Shop. Koi, a sushi restaurant, opened in 2012.
And around the corner is the Vegetist, a vegetarian restaurant, on Bridge Street.
On nearby East Main Street, Rosa Mina opened last year, and the Safari Caffeine Lounge reopened on the street, too.
’More Business For Everybody’
But Andretta says he doesn’t see all those other new businesses as competition.
A rising tide will lift all boats, he said.
“I don’t want to say competition, I want to say more business for everybody,” he said.
The restaurant business is notoriously fickle, but Andretta said it’s good to see businesses opening — and staying open.
Cassetti agreed, and said he’s looking forward to seeing his brother-in-law’s new place.
“I’m excited for Massimo,” the mayor said, noting that the building will be the first new construction on Main Street in decades.
That’s important, according to Sheila O’Malley, the city’s economic development director.
“When you see someone wanting to invest in new construction — it’s costly to invest in a bricks and mortar project — it speaks volumes,” she said. “A business owner is saying ‘I like what I’m seeing, I like all the traffic and the energy, now I want to make that investment.’”
