7 a.m.?
“That’s when I start making the sauce.”
7:24 a.m.?
“Gotta start the prep. Eggs, noodles … for the pasta that day. And then I fire up the machine to make the noodles.”
And then?
“That’s when I start getting the meat ready for the next day’s meatballs, and I’m stirring the sauce, and making sure the noodles are getting dry.”
So, it’s a process?
“It’s a process. Until the first customer walks through the door. That’s when it’s another new day.”
Meet Neal Zaccagnini, an avid sports fan who will return to coaching high school football this fall, and who just so happens to own and operate one of the oldest eateries in the Upper Ohio Valley. The Roosevelt opened in 1933, Neal’s father bought the restaurant in 1975, and then the son took over for his father about 12 years ago.
“It’s labor intensive, yes, but that’s because the actual food is made on premise each and every day,” he said. “But we do our take-out orders, and we feed the people who sit down at the same nine tables we’ve always had. The tablecloths are still checkered as they’ve always been, and you will see our same employees who have worked there for many years. All of it is what makes up The Roosevelt.”
Never Ending Homecoming
He wanted to play games forever but when that plan went belly-up, he flirted with a career in professional sports management while interning for an NHL franchise and working for the triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees.
But then Zaccaginini came home. He wanted to get his master’s degree in Education so he could teach and coach on the high school level and he noticed his father, Pete, needed some help at the restaurant.
“My plan was to come back home, help my father get to his retirement, and to get my Education degree from West Liberty,” Zaccagnini explained. “As I got more involved on the restaurant end of things, I realized there were certain aspects about it that I really enjoyed, and here I am 15-20 years later and The Roosevelt is still open for business and doing very well.
“Being your own boss can be very appealing, carrying on a legacy I watched my father carry as far as he could, and the employees and the customers are some of the best folks I have ever known in my lifetime. I could not allow the doors to close on those people,” he said. “Plus, it’s a lot of fun, and each day is a different day.”
What is NOT different, however, are the recipes for what appears on the menu.
“We have added a couple of items like the cheese-stuff ravioli, the cheese-stuff rigatoni, and the cheese-stuffed gnocchi, and we also do sausage sandwiches on Wednesday and Saturdays,” Zaccagnini said. “But everything else on the menu is exactly the same as it was when my father was in charge. That’s why there are 400 hand-rolled meatballs every day and fresh and homemade noodles on a daily basis.
“When I took charge of the restaurant, my goal was to not change a single thing because I’m all about consistency and I’m all about quality. Those are the two things I will never compromise on,” he insisted. “I think a restaurant gets in trouble when ownership puts too much on the menu and that is something I will always avoid. What we have on our menu we do every day and we do it very well, so why change a thing?”
Closed on Sunday
His father served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years before purchasing The Roosevelt in his late 30s. Neal, now 45 years old with 12 years of ownership under his belt already, is prepared for the long haul at 3175 Union Street, and that is why he has worked diligently to position the eatery as a community partner in the Wheeling area.
“Our area has its challenges, that’s for sure, and a lot of people have picked up and left like I almost did I don’t know how many times,” Zaccagnini said. “There’s something about this area, though, and its people that keep me and my wife here.”
That is why it is not a struggle those six early mornings per week for this entrepreneur to wake and make the sauce, the pasta, and the meatballs for each day.
“I am very proud to be the next person to operate The Roosevelt, and we’re excited that, coming next year, we’ll celebrate our 90th year in Bellaire, Ohio,” Zaccagnini said with a big smile. “There are not many businesses who make it to 90 years, and as I tell people, The Roosevelt is as old as the Pittsburgh Steelers because we go back to 1933 just like they do.
“I don’t know what my father’s plan was for the restaurant when he hung it up at the age of 74, but he always told me he would have been fine with me doing something other than taking over the restaurant, but now that he is 85 years old, I think he’s pretty happy The Roosevelt is still around,” he added. “When you drive home after a good day at work, there’s really no better feeling. When you have great employees who are more like family, you feed a lot of great people, and you are part of a terrific community, you have something very special and my goal is to hold on to it all as long as it’s possible.”
