Bad Days for Red Sauce Joints

News from Queens and Brooklyn indicates the City will soon be losing two of its more authentic Italian red sauce joints.

Over at Queens Crap, a readers post news that Salerno's in Richmond Hill may be gone for good. The restaurant has been around for more than 70 years, and was a location in "Goodfellas." The door has a sign saying "closed for renovations," but word on the street is otherwise, and no one is answering the phone.

Over in Carroll Gardens, meanwhile, Casa Rosa on Court and Carroll Streets is on the market. They're asking $3.3 million for the building and lot, and, with that prime location (right near the park, lots of foot traffic and services), they'll get it. The building's been around for at least 100 years, and most of that time its been a restaurant, though not always the Casa Rosa, which is a fairly recent place. For a time, it appears, it was a pool parlor, which is cool. The DOC site shows that while the address has incurred quite a few DOB violations over the last 25 years, all of them have been dismissed. Hmmm.

I'd be sad to see Casa Rosa go. Not that it's such great food, but it's one of the last red-sauce, old-style places that were once so prevalent in Carroll Gardens and are redolent of the neighborhood's history. If it vanishes, that only leaves The Red Rose on Smith, really. And, I suppose, Marco Polo, though that's a much fancier affair, and who knows what's going on with that place these days.

The photo's courtesy of Pardon Me For Asking.