No Gimmicks, Just Good Pizza

Owner of Mario’s Restaurant and Pizzeria, Mario Dinardi. Mario’s Restaurant and Pizzeria, located on Route 6 in Mahopac, has been in business for 20 years. Owner Mario Dinardi grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, an Italian-food lover’s Mecca. And the restaurant business seems to run in the blood. Dinardi’s father owned an Italian restaurant in Yonkers, also named Mario’s. Of his six paternal aunts and uncles, all but one owned a restaurant.

“My father and uncle were partners in the place in Yonkers. I started working there when I was about twelve,” Dinardi recalled, “I would pick up one little thing at a time. I made sandwiches, and then I made the sauce. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I really started to get into it.” Dinardi said his father and uncle showed him everything from how to wash a dish to how to order food supplies.

His family eventually moved to Mahopac, and Dinardi attended Mahopac High School. There he took BOCES cooking classes, learning how to cook food in more of a catering context. After his father sold the restaurant in Yonkers, Dinardi worked at a more the more upscale, business-oriented Mahopac restaurant, Tony’s.

Dinardi had more experience in the restaurant business than most 24 year olds. His brother-in-law asked if he would like to help open up a place of their own. Mario’s, the now familiar roadside eatery, opened up that year. Dinardi’s brother-in-law left the business in 1999 to pursue other opportunities, and Dinardi has been running it ever since.

Mario’s is a classic neighborhood Italian family restaurant. There are no gimmicks.. “We try to make it familyfriendly,” Dinardi explained. “We have mainly regulars—families that come here with their kids. In tough times you can come in and get a pizza for $11, and feed a family a four.”

The pizza is classic, Bronx-style pie. Dinardi said, “the sauce is the main thing, the main flavor in the pizza. Crust is important too, but you need tomatoes to be a good quality. We buy great Italian whole-peeled tomatoes for our sauce.”

Families can also pick from a number of traditional Italian dishes with chicken, veal—even fried calamari and other seafood.

Though Dinardi doesn’t advertise the restaurant as an upscale, foodie-destination, he can be discriminating when it comes to his ingredients. “During the summertime my dad has a garden. He brings me vegetables—tomatoes, peppers, lettuce—which I use here for the business,” Dinardi said. “It’s awesome.” To save a little money during the economic downturn, Dinardi now makes weekly trips to food markets in Mt. Vernon and Hunt’s Point for his produce.

There is one unique touch in the restaurant. Around the dining floor are a few chairs with name plates, one each for “Joe,” “Nancy,” “Manny,” and “Santa.” Dinardi explains that they were four customers who had been coming “since day one” to Mario’s. “About ten years in, we decided as a Christmas present to get nameplates for their seats,” Dinardi recalled. “They used to come in all together, now they come in separately.”

Dinardi and his wife Bettina have two sons, Anthony, 14, and Michael, 8. Dinardi said he brings them in the back of the restaurant occasionally. “If they don’t show interest in the business, I’m not going to force them,” Dinardi said, “but if they want to, I’ll show them, just like my dad showed me.”

“People ask me all the time, ‘Aren’t you sick of eating pizza?’” Dinardi said, laughing, “I’m not. I might be sick of everything else, but not pizza. I eat it almost every day.”