Metro Pizza | Our Story

Our Story

In 1905 Gennaro Lombardi established the first Pizzeria in America. It was located on Spring Street in the heart of New York's Little Italy. By good fortune, when our grandparents came to America they settled just 50 yards away. Ever since those early days, pizza has been at the center of our family life. Our parents got their first jobs feeding coal into the big bakery ovens where Sicilian pizzas were baked and carried out into the neighborhood to feed the immigrant families hungry for a taste of home. Over the years the time-honored skills of the Pizzaiolo, the pizza chef, have been handed down from our fathers, uncles, aunts, brothers and cousins - from one generation to the next.

Bringing our family recipes to you since 1928

As Italian immigrants settled across the country, they carried their love for combining food, family and friends with them to every corner of America. At Santarpio's in East Boston, the Home Run Inn on Chicago's South Side and at Tommaso's in San Francisco's North Beach, this tradition has continued and evolved. Every neighborhood has placed it's own personal stamp on it's local pizza. The debate over which city makes the best pizza will never be settled, because each of us has such warm memories of that first date or family gathering at our own neighborhood Pizzeria. We believe that a true Pizzeria should be a gathering place for family and friends to relax, share great food and enjoy each other's company. We have visited hundreds of Pizzerias across the country, learning and gathering recipes to bring our guests a taste of home, wherever home might be. Which city has the best pizza? At Metro Pizza we celebrate all of the great traditions of the pizza experience and we Thank You for choosing us as your neighborhood Pizzeria.

John Arena and Sam Facchini. Then and now.

Their faces look strangely familiar, but, someone switched beards on them and they appear to be wearing wigs! With the help and encouragement of their parents, two cousins named John and Sam left New York and moved to Las Vegas in a borrowed car to start a small pizza business back in 1980. What you see in the photo was all they had when they got to town - two pizza ovens, a cash register, a napkin holder and each other. Since those early days, they've started The Pizza Olympics (1984), The International Pizza Exchange (1987), The World Pizza Spinning Championships (1990) and The National Pizza Hall of Fame (1999). They were also named National Pizza Operators of the Year (1986), Nevada Restaurateurs of the Year (1999), IFMA Silver Plate Independent Restaurateurs of the Year (2019), and Metro Pizza was voted Las Vegas' Greatest Pizzeria of All-Time (2020). If you ask them, however, they will tell you that nothing has really changed in the last forty-three years -- they still have those two pizza ovens . . . and each other.