Cooking up a taste of Old Vegas

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Marinara sauce flows through Bobby Capozzoli's veins.

The 66-year-old restaurateur can't seem to get away from the business.

"I started out making pizza when I was a kid in Detroit," Capozzoli says. "I was 15 years old. This is the hardest business there is. You either hate it or you love it."

For years he worked 12- to 15-hour days seven days a week at various restaurants he owned. "Some nights I wouldn't even go home. I'd just sleep on a table in the back of the restaurant."

He doesn't work that hard anymore, but still his shirts are stained from occasional ventures into the kitchen to prepare one of his special dishes.

These days he mostly greets folks who are hungry for authentic Italian food - and a taste of Old Vegas - at DeStefano's. The small, family-style restaurant is tucked away in a shopping center at 3430 E. Tropicana Ave.

He chats it up, hoping DeStefano's can recapture the essence of the good times when food and entertainment were synonymous.

On weekends, trumpeter Rick Jones showcases local jazz musicians and singers, filling the room with fans.

"I really want to bring back the old Vegas," Capozzoli says.

It's a subject he knows a lot about. If the last name sounds familiar it's because it was attached to a restaurant on South Maryland Parkway, a place where the likes of Tom Jones, the Righteous Brothers, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme enjoyed hanging out, eating and sometimes performing.

Capozzoli came to Vegas in the late '70s from Southern California, where his father owned a chain of restaurants called Giuseppe's. He came here to visit his brother Joe, who was a dealer at the Aladdin.

Capozzoli saw the popular Tower of Pizza, on the Strip near the Jockey Club and the Lucky Ducky Liquor store and across from the Aladdin.

"I said, 'I'd sure like to buy that,'" he recalls telling one of his brother's friends who was in real estate. "A couple of hours later I got a phone call."

When he bought the business from Jasper Speciale in 1979, it was a hangout for celebrities, performers and others who wanted pizza in the wee hours.

"There were crowds three deep all the time," Capozzoli says. "Some of the entertainers who would come in at 3 in the morning would sing or play their horns."

A few years later the rent shot from $5,500 to $17,000 a month, and he moved the business to Boulder Highway in Henderson.

In 1985, he and his brothers Joe and Mickey opened Capozzoli's at 3333 S. Maryland Parkway. It was a hit almost from the beginning, with celebrities from the Tower of Pizza days routinely dropping by for food and entertainment.

The brothers started buying one another out, then Frank "Rocco" Sorrano bought the restaurant two years ago and renamed it Rocco Capozzoli's. It burned in September. The fire is under investigation, but Sorrano is not a suspect, Clark County Fire Department spokesman Scott Allison said.

After he sold his share, Bobby Capozzoli bought an interest in Casa di Amore on East Tropicana and Topaz avenues. Casa di Amore featured many of the Capozzoli dishes, some dating almost a century to family restaurants in Italy, and it had entertainment most nights.

When his partner bought him out, Capozzoli thought he would retire and enjoy the food from the other side of the counter.

"I was retired about a week," Capozzoli says.

He got a call from his cousin George Pope, a water chemist from Arizona. Pope and his brother, Timmy, were looking for an investment. Timmy Pope, a chef for nearly 30 years, had worked at Capozzoli's and at Casa di Amore.

They asked Capozzoli to act as host at DeStefano's. You got me, he told them.

DeStefano's recently celebrated its first anniversary. It's a family restaurant - Timmy works in the kitchen and his wife, Terry, waits tables. "Terry worked for me for almost 18 years," Capozzoli says. "Then she married Timmy. I used to be her boss; now I'm her cousin."

Three or four nights a week, Capozzoli meets and greets at the door. Occasionally, he heads to the kitchen to fill a special request.

"I've been cooking for over 50 years," Capozzoli says. "I still love it."