Aldo's Pizza: 68 Years, Three Owners, and a Neighborhood Keeping It Alive

When pizza was still a novelty on the Peninsula, Aldo Scaliucci opened what the Downtown San Mateo Association still calls one of the city's first pizzerias. Shoreview was young then, filling in with new families, and the little shop on Norfolk grew up right alongside the neighborhood. Much of that early history has faded from the record, but the name, the recipes, and the thin, crispy, tangy-sauced pie he built carried Aldo's through everything that came after.

For most San Mateans alive today, Aldo's means Manny. Manuel "Manny" Lucas, a Portuguese immigrant from the Azores, bought the restaurant in 1986 after years managing Round Table locations around town, and for close to forty years he was Aldo's. He knew your order before you gave it. One longtime customer described him simply as "a treat to talk to." He brought a little island hospitality to Norfolk Street and made it the heart of the place.

He left his mark on the menu, too. The Star of India, an Indian-spiced pie that has no business working at an old-school neighborhood joint and somehow became a favorite. The Greek Favorite. Manny's Favorite, the all-meat pizza named for the man himself. And Ana's Choice, clams and shrimp, named for his wife Ana, his partner of 55 years. Order any of them today and they're still exactly as they were.

Manny passed away in 2026. His name is on the menu, and it always will be, and the neighborhood has been remembering him warmly all summer.

Aldo's is now in the hands of Danica Gordils, who bought it with her boyfriend and was welcomed as the new owner by the Downtown San Mateo Association in the fall of 2024. In an interview for the group's Shop Small campaign that year, she explained how it happened. She had spent, by her own count, "pretty much half of my life" in the restaurant industry, and always knew she wanted a place to call her own. Aldo's was not something she went hunting for. Her boyfriend had been eating the pizza since he was four years old, and when he heard it was for sale, that was that. "It was just like, game over," she said. "We had to have it."

She kept what works: the recipes, the crust, the original staff in the kitchen, and the wonderfully unchanged room. Regulars who have eaten here for decades say the pizza hasn't changed a bit, which, at Aldo's, is the highest compliment there is. What struck her most was how much the place holds. "There's not one day that somebody doesn't come in here and talk about how this is a nostalgic place," she said. Customers tell her about coming in as kids with a parent who is gone now, sitting at the same table. "They feel like a kid again. It's really awesome to see."

Her approach is plain hard work. She sponsors local soccer teams, tries to stay present in the neighborhood, and is at the shop, by her own account, seven days a week. "You have to be all in," she said. "You have to put your heart into it, because it's a lot of work. But it's rewarding, to make people, especially hungry people, happy." That last phrase is hers, and it is the one the Downtown San Mateo Association used to introduce her.

Even in 2024, she knew exactly what kept the lights on. "Without the San Mateo community, I don't think Aldo's would be in existence right now," she said. "We keep our doors open because of the San Mateo community. It's word of mouth more than anything." It would prove truer than anyone wanted it to.

Staying open for 68 years has not been easy. In 2024, a fire at the Shoreview Shopping Center sent heavy smoke through the block and forced Aldo's and several neighboring businesses to close. Aldo's cleaned up, passed its safety checks, and reopened, keeping customers posted the whole way on Facebook. It was the kind of setback that closes a lot of restaurants for good. Aldo's came back.

Then, this summer, came the hardest stretch yet. On August 6, 2026, Aldo's posted something that stopped the neighborhood cold: "Last month, we truly believed we were at the end of the road with Aldo's Pizza."

They didn't close. The community showed up, ordered pizza, shared the posts, stopped in. "Your continued support has allowed us to keep fighting to stay opened," they wrote. "We can't make any promises about the future, but we can continue showing up and making great pizza."

That line is honest, and a little heartbreaking. Sixty-eight years in, Aldo's is still open for one reason: the same neighborhood it has fed since 1958 is showing up for it now.

So here's the ask, plain and simple: go get a pizza. Aldo's is open at 600 S Norfolk Street, seven days a week, for dine-in, pickup, and delivery. Order the Star of India, or Manny's Favorite, or whatever you grew up on. Bring the family. Share their posts. In a city that loses restaurants all the time, this is one worth keeping, and right now, keeping it is up to us.

This story draws on the Downtown San Mateo Association, the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce's 2024 Shop Small interview with Danica Gordils, Better Business Bureau records, and Aldo's Pizza's own social posts.