Palmo Aracri is the ride-or-die pizza guy of downtown Columbus
Palmo Aracri thought about doing it.
In fact, he almost did it.
But in the eleventh hour, when he truly had to make a decision, he and his longtime restaurant stayed put, because he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, leave downtown Columbus.
Last year when Aracri’s lease was running out at Cafe Napolitana—the High Street pizzeria that served downtown Columbus for nearly thirty years—he and his family knew a location change was coming.
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That much was inevitable.
What they didn’t know, however, was where they would end up. But instead of selecting any of the many new locales Aracri and his family had earmarked, he followed his gut. He stayed home, and his brand-new eatery, Aracri on Gay, opened in January—less than two blocks away from where Cafe Napolitana once stood—the new spot a beacon to the longstanding restaurateur’s faith in that area, in the city of Columbus as a whole.
“When it came down to it, we couldn’t pull the trigger. We were thinking about going to other parts of the city, about going to the suburbs even,” Aracri said. “But when we really started thinking about it, I mean, my kids grew up downtown. In a sense, downtown Columbus helped raise them.”
Despite his love for downtown Columbus, Aracri—whose children now help him operate not only Aracri on Gay, but his other campus-area eatery, Aracri Pizzeria—will also be the first one to talk openly about the struggles the area has faced, with declining lunchtime sales setting in for him well before COVID-19.
So even though other areas of the city, of the far north or northwestern suburbs, may have made more sense by the numbers, Aracri’s dedication to the city’s central corridor is deeper than money.
“You can go to any city in America and the downtown is almost always the most eclectic area; it’s the heart of the city,” he said. “There’s nowhere else where you have executives rubbing shoulders with students and construction workers all the same. And that’s where I wanted to stay.”
And while Aracri chose to stay put, his new pizzeria, located at 51 E. Gay St., seems like a step forward all the same. Not only has the longtime Columbus restaurateur crafted new, more experimental pies to compliment his ever-popular New York-style slices, the storefront’s interior feels like a breath of fresh air as well.
Vintage posters and memorabilia find a home on the new pizzeria’s walls alongside unique, gritty art from former employees and friends, and even tokens of Aracri’s time in Columbus.
Above one of the pizzeria’s larger seating areas hangs the top of a former fast-food dumpster, repurposed into a canvas with a postmodern knight-jousting scene painted over it in primarily green and pink tones.
Near the eatery’s main entrance hangs a door emblazoned with the signature of former Columbus Governor John J. Gilligan (who served from 1971-1975), which Aracri said he plucked from the first iteration of his downtown pizzeria, which was opened in the same building as a defunct government office.
Aracri on Gay is also full of tasteful, vintage decoration: maps of Italy and colorful, retro posters line other areas of the restaurant, alongside throwback bar seating and hanging light fixtures, all of which was cordinated by Deanne Aracri, Palmo’s wife.
These additions are a step out from the more restrained decor that Cafe Napolitana boasted, but they also—like downtown Columbus itself—feel incredibly close to home for the longtime Columbu.
“I feel like I have everything here,” Palmo Aracri said. “The new restaurant is full of what reminds me of the people in my life, and what this place means to me and my family, and that’s how I want it to be.”
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