For her 21st birthday, Gina D’Acierno’s parents bought her a bar.
The next 40 years would see D’Acierno grow from a bartender into a business owner, and John Anthony’s evolve from a rowdy bar into an Italian restaurant with a focus on quality, consistency and treating diners like family.
“In the beginning, I hoped for longevity and success. There were many times when it was tough and business wasn’t good,” she said. “But we fought through it and we made it.”
John Anthony’s opened on her birthday, New Year’s Eve 1984, and debuted to the public on Jan. 5, 1985.
The restaurant on Center New Texas Road near O’Block Elementary School was previously Johnny A’s. D’Acierno’s parents, the late John and Joy D’Acierno, bought it from John Castelli after it had been closed for nine months.
“We couldn’t decide what to call it. When they were at the closing, we still did not have a name,” D’Acierno said.
Naming it John Anthony’s was her mother’s idea after they asked Castelli what his full name was. “Anthony” was his middle name and also the name of her brother, who died in a construction accident working with their father in 1978. The name honors her father and brother.
D’Acierno, 61, said she had wanted to be a bartender since she was 14, watching them work at a cousin’s graduation party in Sharpsburg. She started hostessing at Pirates Cove in Fox Chapel when she was 16, and began bartending lessons as soon as she turned 18.
She didn’t go to college after graduating from Plum High School in 1981 because she knew what she was going to do — even though a teacher had once scoffed and laughed at her dreams.
“I wanted to be in the restaurant business. I don’t know what it was about it. I just loved it. I had a desire for it. It just grew through the years,” she said. “My father knew my feelings.”
While John D’Acierno, who died in 2018, was a general contractor and owner of Joy Masonry, he also had an interest in restaurants. Growing up in Sharpsburg, his father sold pizzas out of their house.
“My dad always kind of liked the thought of having a restaurant. When I wanted to do it, it just kind of solidified that desire to some day have a restaurant,” D’Acierno said. “When Johnny A’s shut down and the opportunity was presented to my parents, everything fell into place.”
John Anthony’s opened after nine months of remodeling. And it wasn’t then what it is today.
“The beginning was crazy. It was a party. We’d be pushing people out the door at 2:30 in the morning,” D’Acierno said. “My dad would bring in sand and we’d do beach parties. We had dart games at one point, we had foosball games. It was a party atmosphere.
“It was a good phase for the restaurant.”
But as nonsmoking became the rule, and with police cracking down on drunken driving, D’Acierno said, they had to reinvent themselves, moving away from being a bar to a greater focus on food and finer drinks.
“You’ve got to change,” she said. “You’ve got to keep changing with the times.”
At the core of John Anthony’s since the start is her aunt, Carol Vivino — her mother’s sister — and her recipes.
“She worked here for the first 30 years until she couldn’t work no more,” D’Acierno said. “She made the wedding soup, the meatballs, the sauce, the lasagna. She made all that stuff.”
Vivino, 83, lives in Penn Hills. She was working at a restaurant in Oakmont when D’Acierno’s mother told her they were opening the restaurant and she would be in the kitchen while her niece was tending bar. She retired 10 years ago after a hip replacement.
“Everything was from scratch. Nothing came in. I made it all myself,” Vivino said. That included breaking up the chicken and making the little meatballs for “Aunt Carol’s Famous Recipe” wedding soup.
She used to go to the restaurant for lunch every Wednesday with her sister, Joy. She hasn’t gone as often since Joy died in 2022.
Vivino says D’Acierno’s longtime chef, Dave Shoffner, does a good job. While saying everything’s good, she recommends the eggplant Parmesan.
“Gina is running it really well. Forty years, they fly by,” Vivino said. “She’s a good kid — I still say kid.”
D’Acierno’s parents were pretty involved in John Anthony’s for its first 10 years, after which she began to slowly take over until 2009, when she moved back to the area from Shaler and began making major changes to the menu and the building. She bought the property from her parents in 2015.
“From there, we just kept growing and changing and trying to become better at what we did,” she said. “We’ve always been focused on quality and consistency. We incorporated different food menus and different food specials. Our core recipes are the same, our sauce and wedding soup and stuff like that has always been the same. We incorporated better drinks and better food.”
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The hardest years were from 2000 to 2009, when D’Acierno was living in Shaler, raising her daughter and away from the restaurant. They even considered trying to get on a restaurant rescue television show.
“It was too much for my mom and dad. I was here as much as I could be,” she said. “It was going down fast. Our sales were down. I said to my husband at the time and my daughter, I got to get back here and go all-in or we have a chance of losing everything that I worked for.”
The family moved to Murrysville in 2010, and she did just that.
“I started bringing in specials, just being here, being on everybody, constantly making sure that everything was up to par,” she said. “We incorporated a lot of new drinks and specialty drafts and got a new 10-tap beer system. Since then, we’ve quadrupled our gross annual sales.”
Covid in 2020 was a low and a high point.
“The community held us up like no other. We still had to employ almost as many people on a Friday night because we were that busy with takeouts,” she said. “This community was amazing to us. They treated us with such kindness and love and compassion. They would leave $100 tips, $150 tips. They took care of my people.
“I’ve always contributed to the community. Anybody comes in and asks me for anything, I give,” she said. “I feel like that came back to me during covid.”
D’Acierno recently hired a front-of-house manager so she doesn’t need to be at the restaurant as much. She would like to retire in four or five years. She’s hopeful her chef, Shoffner, will take it over.
“He’s been with me 10 years,” she said. “He has a lot to do with the growth.”
D’Acierno is proud of accomplishing 40 years, and of what they’ve established. She has served generations of families from baptisms, to weddings, to funerals.
“There are so many families that have been with us since Day One,” she said. “I’m very grateful for their support and their love and sticking with us through the years. We had some rocky years. The community stuck with us, and I’m very grateful and feel very blessed to be here.”