Fabrizi's Restaurant, Jumonville, Pennsylvania, USA
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Fabrizi's is an Italian restaurant located in Jumonville, Pennsylvania1.
It was established in the mid-1940s by Nick Fabrizi, who had run the Tripoli Restaurant in downtown Uniontown. It began as a Sunday get-together with some close friends but the food was so good that they eventually decided to open a restaurant on top of the mountain in south-western Pennsylvania.
When Nick died in 1967, his wife Adeline asked her sister, Rose Erminio, and her husband, Chauncey, to help out. The facilities were primitive, but the sauce and home-made pasta were enough to draw people from miles around.
The current proprietor, Jerry, started working at the restaurant in 1985, while attending chef school at Westmoreland Community College. He graduated in 1988 and became a certified chef. His aunt taught him the 'secret of the sauce' during that time, a recipe she told him 'never to give away'.
In 1993, a fire destroyed the kitchen and much of the interior of the restaurant, which was probably for the best as it gave them a chance to install indoor plumbing and a decent heating system2. The renovations were carried out by Jerry and his family and completed the same year. The restaurant is still closed during January because of the cold.
Hours of operation are Tuesday to Saturday from 4 - 9pm and on Sundays from 12 - 8pm. The restaurant is closed on Mondays, the day the staff gathers to make the pasta for the coming week.
The recipes have remained unchanged since the earliest times and, in 1998, the restaurant obtained a license to sell alcoholic drinks.
Take-out is available and the pricing is still extremely affordable.