Auburn's Hollywood Restaurant Permanently Closes Its Doors

When Dan and Rose Cecora opened their restaurant on Clark Street in Auburn in 1933, they called it Cecora's.

One of their first customers was a man from California who was in the area visiting family, recalls Joe Colella Jr., the Cecoras' grandson and the restaurant's current owner and chef.

“He told my grandparents, ‘Your restaurant is worthy of a star,’” Colella told the Citizen. “'You should call it Hollywood.'”

Ninety-one years later, Hollywood is over. Colella announced late last month that the Italian restaurant would serve its final meals on Saturday, June 29.

Colella took over the restaurant from his parents, Joe and Bridget Colella, in 1983. Sitting in his dark dining room last week, the sun casting soft light through his stained glass windows onto the green tablecloths, he said he was just time to close. He spent most of those 40 years working 10 to 12 hours six days a week, he said, so he looks forward to retiring and enjoying life.

There has to be a threshold, he says. “It’s physically and mentally exhausting.

Laughing, he continued: “Friends said, 'Joes is all work and no play. Joes is a boring boy.'”

In December after the Cecoras opened Hollywood, prohibition was repealed. Their original liquor license, issued in April of that year, still hangs on the wall along with the original menu.

The restaurant's neon sign was eventually hung and its logo, a monk, was painted on the side of the building. Colella said the image was inspired by an adage similar to Ecclesiastes 9:7: “Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a joyful heart.” » The Hollywood would live up to its name, serving celebrities such as Shelley Long, Neil Sedaka, Milton Berle and Christopher McDonald.

Colella's parents, on the other hand, ran the Town Tavern in Ovid where, although he was born in Auburn, he grew up until he was 9 years old. He started out in the restaurant business, washing dishes and cleaning. He also worked for his uncle, who owned a beer distribution company. In high school, Colella entered the kitchen, which prepared him to attend the Culinary Institute of Americanin Poughkeepsie.

By the time Colella graduated from the institute in 1976, Hollywood had changed hands several times. After 17 years in business, the Cecoras leased it to another owner. Joe and Bridget Colella then took it over in 1964 and closed for a year to renovate it. They also closed their Ovide Tavern, because, as their son learned, running the restaurant required focus and balance.

“My mother was a very generous person. I like to say my mother gave everything and my father kept everything,” Colella said. “I found a happy medium.”

Despite finding that balance, Colella said many things about running Hollywood remain difficult.

In recent years, he has struggled to find staff and source quality food at a price affordable enough to keep menu prices stable. He speculated that families having fewer children was the reason for the staffing problem, noting that he had none to inherit the restaurant. He has extended family who work in the food industry, but they have expressed no interest in taking over the business.

But selling is not an option, he says.

Standing behind the bar, dressed in white, briefcase in hand, as if ready for action, Colella said he wouldn't have done anything differently in Hollywood.

In many ways, the four-story building serves as his home, and not just because he lives in the apartment above. It’s also full of memories.

Photos and other memorabilia adorn the restaurant's walls, even his grandfather's bowling shirt from the 1930s, and everything from the dishes to the linens tell a story of three 91-year generations.

As this story comes to a close, Colella will close out Hollywood with condensed schedules four days a week.

As people stopped there for their last meal and flooded the restaurant's Facebook page with their own memories and messages of support, he shared his gratitude.

“I’m saddened by what I have to do,” he said. “I appreciate the community that has supported us for years.”