Sanfilippo’s Pizza, a La Mesa institution where customers for 40 years would have thought they were family as they dined on dishes freshly prepared from recipes brought from Sicily, is closing.

Anna Sanfilippo opened the restaurant with her husband, Donato, on Aug. 3, 1975, but the restaurant is now up for sale. It’s just become too expensive to do business anymore, she said.

“I am so sad that it marks the end of an era in La Mesa, and in my life,” said Brad Singer, who attended Helix High with Anna’s daughter, Dora Sanfilippo-Calcutt.

“The Sanfilippos made wonderful food, and the owners treated you like family,” he said.

“It was where I took the only blind date that I ever had, back in May of 1988. There must have been something magical in the pizza sauce because that night, we jokingly agreed on the name of our first daughter. Twenty-seven years later, (I’m) still happily married and our first daughter has (Dora’s) name.”

When Sanfilippo’s opened, La Mesa had fewer than 40,000 residents. The downtown had just begun to be redeveloped. Now more than 57,000 live in the city, and the restaurant is surrounded by residences and commercial businesses.

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Despite the growth, Anna and Donato kept the small-town, family feel.

Anna, 77, gave her customers personal service, which helped Sanfilippo’s stand out in an industry dominated by chains. On a recent evening, she stopped by a table to give some parents a hand with their crying child. She handed the little one a ball of pizza dough and a small plate of spaghetti for free to settle down the boy.

Former Sanfilippo’s employees Skip and Laurie Wortman met while working at the restaurant in the 1980s. They married 21 years ago.

They moved to Northern California and opened their own restaurant, Ferndale Pizza Co., and later added an old stove from Sanfilippo’s.

“Skip and I impersonate Don and Anna all the time,” Laurie Wortman said. “We learned a lot about work ethic from them. They touched so many lives. They treated us all like family. No one left that place without a piece of Sanfilippo’s in their heart forever.”

But operating expenses have become to much too bear. The rising costs of minimum wage pay and sick leave for their nearly two dozen employees are exorbitant, Anna said. Prices for ingredients have escalated, but prices for menu items have not risen at a similar pace. Nearly all the food at Sanfilippo’s is made from scratch. There is no deep fryer, no heat lamps, not even a microwave.

Dora Sanfilippo-Calcutt, the eldest daughter, manages the restaurant with her husband. Sanfilippo-Calcutt said the family has been hesitant to increase prices too often or too high out of fear of driving away diners. She knows there is plenty of competition from other restaurants, including chains that serve faster.

“It’s been difficult for us to make a profit,” Sanfilippo-Calcutt said. “For a small mom-and-pop place, it’s nearly impossible to stay ahead.”

The restaurant’s sale is in escrow, Anna Sanfilippo said. She said she expected the restaurant to stay open for the next two to three months.

San Diego State professor Carl Winston, director of the L. Robert Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism, said independent restaurants are having it tough in an era of chains and changing demographics.

“My mom ran a restaurant for 30 years, so I know from personal experience, and it’s really sad,” Winston said. “Businesses started with personal passion sometimes only last as long as the lease, or as long as a passionate family member wants to keep making it happen. It’s going to be a loss for La Mesa, inevitably, and something to mourn.”

Donato came from Sicily and met Anna, a native San Diegan who was working in the grocery industry at the time. The two started the restaurant with his own recipes from the old country, including meat and marinara sauce, eggplant and chicken Parmesan. Donato died in 2012 after complications from a stroke he suffered in 2007.

Anna said the closely held family recipes that have kept patrons, their children and grandkids coming for 40 years are staying secret. That means items like “Don’s Special,” a baked and layered pasta dish with cheese and meat sauce, will have to be enjoyed sooner rather than later.

“We hope all our customers will come in one last time to say goodbye,” Anna said.

Former La Mesa City Councilman Ernie Ewin will have to find a new place for his standing lunch date with his wife, Nancy. The two have been eating at Sanfilippo’s on Saturday afternoons for decades.

“My thoughts are all the wonderful times for my family, friends and fundraisers that have been a part of our lives,” Ewin said.