Monday, May 4, 2009

Yala's Pizza: I wonder if they still use Wonder-Dough?

Here's something you don't see every day. It's an ad for Yala's Pizza that ran in the Journal back in 1959 in one of those big Lorain anniversary editions.
   It's interesting (to me at least) because you actually get to see the names of the people behind the operation: Louis Fuervando, Jay Telloni and Yala Armelie. (I always thought that 'Yala' was a last name!) The ad is also great because of the chef mascot.
   It sure is great pizza – no doubt Lorain's favorite now and forever. To my taste buds, it tastes the same now as it did when I first tasted it back in the 1960s. 
   My family always had Yala's Pizza every Friday night when I was a kid, along with Pepsi (never Coke). Once in a while, we would have Selenti's for something different, but we always came back to Yala's.
   I remember when you could sit down in Yala's and eat your pizza there. 
   Once back in high school days, a couple of pals and I ordered a Yala's pizza during Christmas break and walked there with the intention of eating in. To our dismay, Yala's had gotten recently gotten rid of the booths, so we had to take it with us. After walking around in the snow with it for a while, we decided that we didn't want to walk all the way home with it – so we took it over to Hardees, sat down and started eating it there.
   The Hardees manager came out and asked us, "Is that a Hardees Pizza?" He must have had a sense of humor, because I don't remember being thrown out.
  
  

3 comments:

Ken said...

The voting is so far unanimous. Yala's it is.

-Alan D Hopewell said...

I would also nominate Rosie's Pizza, on Broadway &32nd, and Piccolo's, which was on Broadway at 12th.

Chuck Short said...

I also remember when my buddies and I ate in Yala's a few times after we "collected" every other Saturday for the Journal. Funny thing when I saw the phone number in the 1959 ad, it was the same as I had memorized 282-5169.