The 3rd Chapter of John Carollo’s [of Del Arte Fame] Story

When John Carollo was handed his Diploma in 1979 from St. Francis College in Brooklyn with a Business Degree, he got off to a great start, a job in the Foreign Trade Compensation Department of Chase Manhattan Bank, a mighty gigantic fortress for managing great wealth. Two years later, his climb up the ladder took John to a position in the Trade Compensation Department of the Exti Bank, a Spanish Bank located on Fifth Avenue and 49th Street, Midtown in the world’s center of international finance.

Then the Perfect Storm struck in 1983 and John experience his life-changing epiphany ! A love-sick John decided to marry his beautiful Rosemarie and in the Sicilian tradition at that time he decided to return to his ancestral land for a 45 day honeymoon. The Bank said absolutely NO. John pondered his dilemma. The ladder he was climbing wasn’t going to take him where he wanted to go, his heart was pointing him in another direction. John had convinced his future Sicilian In-Laws that he was deserving of their beautiful young daughter, the young lady who lived just 4 doors away from his house, with whom he had fallen in a love, a love that lasts to this day. And in keeping with a a strong Sicilian tradition, John asked his future Father-In-Law for Rosemarie’s hand before he asked Rosemarie to marry him. Nothing was going to stop him. So John left the Bank, his medical insurance, with no prospects, except a loving wife. From that moment on John and Roe have shared John’s dream every step of the way.

John and Roe opened their first pizzeria in October of 1983 in Hewlett in Nassau County on the South Shore of Long Island while living in Brooklyn.

In 1986, John & Roe moved to the hamlet of Blauvelt and continued to commute to Hewlett. In 1988, they sold the Hewlett pizzeria and purchased another pizzeria in Fairlawn, Bergen County, New Jersey just 12 miles west of the George Washington Bridge, which they operated until 1995 when they bought the “Pizza Del Arte”, which grew into "Del Arte’s", Rockland’s most popular Italian family restaurant, by devoting his love of food to serving families and friends, one of Sicily’s never changing traditions.

This ends, on the restaurant’s 25th Anniversary [which will be properly celebrated when the pandemic goes away], the end of a half century journey from wearing a shirt, tie and jacket to an apron, from banking to baking, from growing a personal family of 3 beautiful daughters and almost 6 beautiful grandchildren, to a wide spread community family, more than just a successful business, a success life.