A beloved Brooklyn pizza joint made famous for its cameo in “Saturday Night Fever” will be serving up its final pies Sunday.
Lenny’s Pizza, a Bensonhurst institution celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, will be closing for good because longtime owner Frank Giordano, 77, is retiring, his daughter Josephine Giordano announced.
“We thankfully have done very well and felt it was best to close once my dad was ready,” she wrote on Facebook. “It’s time for him and I to enjoy our families. We want to thank everyone who has given us the opportunity to serve them.”
The 86th Street mainstay was made famous by the 1977 hit movie starring John Travolta. In the flick, Travolta’s character, Tony Manero, famously orders two slices of pizza and stacks them on top of each other, chomping them down while parading down the strip. His photo has hung at the front window where he ordered for decades.
Fans of the pizzeria expressed great sorrow on social media over Lenny’s closing but thanked its owners for many years dishing out some of the best slices and fried calzones in the city – and the memories made there.
“I’m lost for words, Lenny’s is a landmark to Bensonhurst, to 86st,” wrote Freddy Manzola.
“It’s where I met my wife standing right outside the door. Lenny’s will always be remembered, I want to thank them and congratulations on your retirement! Thank you, thank you, thank you”
“Oh I’m heartbroken!!!” wrote Maricela Ford. “I was planning on heading there once again in April from California!! But I am SO THANKFUL for the opportunity to go there when i did! Pizza is THE BEST IVE EVER HAD!!”
“Good luck in your retirement,” wrote Carla Loizzo. “My memory of Lenny’s was 43 years ago I was pregnant and with my first child and I think it was the owner [who] predicted that I was having a girl lol and she was right! Many slices consumed at Lenny’s thereafter lol.”
Although Lenny’s was named after the original owner, he only owned it for six years. The pizza joint was then sold to another owner who then sold it to Frank Giordano roughly four decades ago.
In 2018, Travolta returned to Lenny’s to celebrate the slice mecca and its role in movie folklore while promoting the movie “Gotti,” in which he played Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.