After 50 Years On Amagansett Main Street, Lupo Family Sells Their Father's 'Ristorante'

For decades, the most loyal customer of Astro Pizza & Felice’s Ristorante has been ordering pizza pies every August with a very unique combination of toppings.

So when someone called on an early evening this week and placed the order for a pie with capers and green olives, co-owner Alda Stipanov knew it was for the English man who had sung with her mother in the dining room and whose late wife had taken beloved pictures of the family that she still has behind the counter.

And so she told the caller that after 50 years in business on Main Street in Amagansett, her family is retiring and has sold the two-named restaurant that her father brought his young family from Sicily to America in 1971 to run.

A few minutes later, the loyal customer — Paul McCartney — strode up to the low take-out window of the restaurant to collect his very English pizza pie and offer his fondest farewells. As no other customer has done in more than 18 months, he was whisked inside for goodbye hugs and handshakes and smiling photos.

“He and my mother would sing together, but she had no clue who he was,” Ms. Stipanov said of the former Beatle, who first came to the restaurant, she guessed, when it was still up the street next door to the Stephen Talkhouse. “That’s why he liked coming here, nobody made a fuss.”

Macca may still be able to keep ordering capers and green olives pizzas from Astro Pizza, which was the name of the pizzeria up the street her father, Felice Lupo, purchased in 1971. She said that she has been told the new owners plan to continue the pizzeria portion of the restaurant — a neighboring business owner said he was told they plan to replace the dining room with an ice cream parlor — and would keep the Astro Pizza name, like her father had done even as he merged it with his eponymous ristorante.

Felice Lupo came to the United States in 1969, to Brooklyn, where other family members had settled. He didn’t much care for it, his daughter said, but when his brother moved to Hampton Bays, Felice came to see it and fell in love with the South Fork.

“He said, ‘I will bring my family to live here,’ and he came back to Sicily and brought us back — we opened on August 28, 1971,” Ms. Stipanov recalled, her Sicilian accent still lingering faintly 50 years later. “I have worked here my whole life.”

Ms. Stipanov and her brother, Gaetano “Tony” Lupo, were 12 and 11 when their father bought Astro Pizza. They have both spent all of the 50 years since working in the restaurant. When they were married, their spouses came to work in the restaurant — and still do. As soon as their combined five children were old enough, they came to work in the restaurants — and still do.

But the younger generation have chosen a different path for the long-term. Each of Ms. Stipanov’s three sons are teachers. They come back to work in the restaurant for the summer high season. But when school starts, it is just the two aging couples left to run the show.

“We have them in the summertime, but the rest of the time its just the four of us — my husband, my brother and his wife,” the matriarch of Amagansett’s only pizzeria said. “”I never thought I would give this place up, but it’s too much now. My grandchildren, they come to see me here because I am always working.”

The eldest Mr. Lupo died in 2015 at the age of 88. He was coming to the restaurant and still making pizza until his final days, his daughter said. She and her brother decided not long ago that they did not want the same future, and urging from their real estate agent pushed them over the edge. They listed the restaurant building early this summer and it sold “just like that” in less than two weeks, she said with a snap of her fingers.

She wouldn’t say for how much.

The family will remain in the area for the time being, Ms. Stipanov said. Her husband, beating flour off his hands on his apron, said he still doesn’t believe he’ll get to retire.

“We’re going to enjoy life for a year, then we’ll decide,” his wife said, sending him back toward the kitchen. “I want to spend time with my grandchildren in the summer. I want to know what it’s like to have a barbecue in the summer.”