The family-run Palace Pizza Bar & Grill gave its family everything, manager Anthony Derkits said. The restaurant was a source of pride, he said, and taught the family how to deal with adversity. His children grew up in the restaurant<\/p>\n
Derkits is excited and anxious for what comes next, ready for a new challenge, but it won\u2019t be easy to say goodbye to the Lehigh Valley restaurant, a \u201ccornerstone\u201d for the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be really tough,\u201d he told The Morning Call.<\/p>\n
The restaurant at 3690 Lehigh St. in Whitehall Township will serve its last pie today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you to all the customers\/family for a great 41 years and for all the support along the way!\u201d an announcement said on a blackboard inside.<\/p>\n
Anthony\u2019s wife, Rosie Galluzzo-Derkits said her parents, Dominick and Joseph Galluzzo, opened Palace Pizza in 1985 just a week before their daughter\u2019s birth. She and her brothers Vinnie and Dominick Jr. were young children when they started helping out at the restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ready for the future,\u201d Vinnie Galluzzo said, which will include more time with his family and taking it easier than before.<\/p>\n
Their parents both died at the age of 63 \u2014 Dominick Sr. in 2021<\/a> and Josephine last year<\/a>, leaving their children as the three owners.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were just everything to everyone,\u201d Rosie said. \u201cThe love that they had for each other was what you enjoyed seeing as a child growing up. \u2026 My dad was my best friend. We did everything together, and a lot of stuff was work-related sometimes because you\u2019re in a family business \u2014 you\u2019re working all day every day\u00a0\u2014 but we\u2019re a close family. \u2026 We tried to get on family vacations. We tried to be together for a lot of things. Just the love that my parents had for everybody, just trying to help the community. They were always with open arms.\u201d<\/p>\n So why close the restaurant?<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s just getting a little bit harder as we all get a little older and navigate our own lives,\u201d Rosie said, highlighting how the restaurant work became more challenging without their parents.\n<\/p>\n She said, \u201cWe\u2019re just ready for a new start. We\u2019re ready for some, I don\u2019t know, maybe quality family time. Like we\u2019ve missed so much as our children grew, and just working all day every day, you just miss a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n It will be a \u201cbittersweet\u201d goodbye for Rosie, who is moving to South Carolina and said she doesn\u2019t know what will be next for the Palace Pizza space.<\/p>\n The restaurant has touched a lot of lives, Rosie said. It taught her how to live and survive, and about hardship and figuring things out. Her children celebrated birthdays there. Customers from the restaurant\u2019s beginning still come around. They\u2019d tell stories of her dad, and she\u2019d watch customers\u2019 kids grow up too.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m proud that we even got this far,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family-run Palace Pizza Bar & Grill gave its family everything, manager Anthony Derkits said. The restaurant was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,182,435,436,289,432],"class_list":["post-240109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-local-news","tag-restaurants-food-and-drink","tag-retail","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}