Jack and Phil Rizzuto opened a pizza joint on the West Bank, but what their customers clamored for was beef. They opened Rizzuto’s Pizzeria on a busy stretch of Belle Chasse Highway near Terry Parkway last spring. Although Hurricane Ida was the catalyst for the shift from pizza to Rizzuto's Ristorante & Chop House in Gretna, the real reason for the change was customer demand.

The family, whose octogenarian patriarch got into the bar business when he was 16, sold Amici Ristorante & Bar on Magazine Street and Creole Carre on Bourbon Street to take over the Tony Angello’s space in Lakeview. “We had never had a white tablecloth kind of place, so when Tony decided to retire, we figured let’s give it a try,” Jack Rizzuto says. “It’s been great from the start.”