Town, village and business reporter {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. AUBURN — The Hollywood Restaurant wasn't always called that. 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, recalled Joe Colella Jr., the Cecoras' grandson and the restaurant's current owner and chef. "He told my grandparents, 'Your restaurant is fit for a star,'" Colella told The Citizen.
"'You should call it Hollywood.'" Ninety-one years later, the Hollywood is a wrap. Colella announced late last month that the Italian restaurant will serve its final meals on Saturday, June 29.
Colella took over the restaurant from his parents, Joe and Bridget Colella, in 1983. Sitting in its darkened dining room last week, the sun casting soft light through its stained glass windows onto the green tablecloths, he said it was simply time to close. He spent most of those 40 years working 10 to 12 hours six days a week, he said, so he's looking forward to retiring and enjoying life.
“There’s got to be a cutoff point,” he said. "It’s physically and mentally wearing.” With a laugh he continued, "Friends would say, 'Joe’s all work and no play.
Joe’s a dull boy.'" The Hollywood Restaurant's original liquor license from 1933 hangs on the wall there. The December after the Cecoras opened the Ho.
