Sad end for Downtown staple Smithfield Cafe
Downtown workers stopped in front of the Smithfield Cafe on Thursday to read two signs in the window.
One said the Smithfield Street restaurant and bar known for its $5.83 breakfasts, cabbage and noodles, and other hearty lunch and dinner fare had closed after almost 80 years. The other invited passers-by to today's lunchtime festival outside Smithfield United Church of Christ, where cafe owner John Petrolias and his former employees will prepare food one last time.
"It will be our swan song," said Petrolias, 76, who struggled through business and personal bankruptcy during the past seven months and wound up losing both the cafe that his father founded and the O'Hara home he shares with his wife, Elizabeth.
The restaurant closed last Friday, but after a long holiday weekend, some regulars still were getting the word yesterday.
"The service was great ... the food, the friendly atmosphere," Jeanine Herle of Whitehall said as she and co-workers Missy Landy and Diane Esswein stopped to look at the closed business. "It's sad."
Food there cost less than at many Downtown sit-down eateries, customers said. Orders arrived quickly, so diners could relax over meals. And the cafe dished out homestyle cooking in a business district dotted with fast-food and other chain restaurants.
The Smithfield Cafe was known as the oldest Pittsburgh restaurant to stay in one location. Many of its 22 employees stayed put for decades, too, and brought their children and other relatives to work for the Petrolias.
"I've been waiting on the same people for 32 years," said Colleen Kelly, the cafe's manager for the past 20 years and a waitress, deli worker and bartender at various times before then.
Petrolias started working in the restaurant at age 8 and had owned and run it since 1958. His father, James, started the business in 1933 with seed money from fellow Greek immigrant Constantinos Michalopolous -- founder of Mitchell's, the city's oldest restaurant, dating to 1906. Mitchell's has moved a few times and has been on Ross Street since 1977.
"The independents keep going and going. It's really tough," Mitchell's third-generation owner, Jim Mitchell, said during a visit to the Smithfield Cafe yesterday.
Allegheny County's drink tax, the state's smoking ban and a poor economy have hurt restaurants, he said. "You've got to work harder and smarter to stay in business, and people don't have the money" to eat out as often, he said.
Petrolias' business sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors in mid-October, about two years after the Pittsburgh Technical Institute moved out of the floors above the cafe. "We lost $10,000 a month," he said, and he couldn't find another tenant for the rest of the eight-story building.
Another problem: "There is no business left in town. At one time, there were something like five department stores, five movie houses," he said, but now, "The only business to be done is from the people who work in town." Revenue lagged, he said.
Petrolias and his wife filed for personal bankruptcy protection in March. U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh converted the business case, for 639 Smithfield Corp., to a Chapter 7 liquidation case this week, and the Petroliases asked the court to change their case to Chapter 7, saying they can't carry out a reorganization plan.
The cafe fell behind on making payments of $13,050 a month on a mortgage with Enterprise Bank and its profits in recent months ranged from $403 to $3,410, court records show.
"I really feel bad, and I feel the worst for the very, very loyal employees I've had," Petrolias said. Workers gave him a luncheon on Wednesday at Mitchell's, he said.
Petrolias' father taught him to serve food as good as what's cooked at home, take note of whether customers clean their plates and treat employees well "because you'll be with them more waking hours than you are with your own family." He typically worked 70 hours a week.
Petrolias, Kelly and other Smithfield Cafe staff will cook pierogies, hot sausage and other food today at the church kitchen — using some pots borrowed from Mitchell's. The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. along Strawberry Way, next to the church.
On Saturday, John and Elizabeth Petrolias will move to Wilmington, N.C., where their daughter, Stacy, lives. Their son, Jamie, who owned the former Jamie's on the Square restaurant in Market Square, works in insurance and lives in Mt. Lebanon.
