The Caz

Where you had to go up to get down. 

Becky and I were talking about old restaurants we had gone to over the years and this one came up. The Caz as everyone used to call it.

When we moved to Buffalo in 1979 one of the first restaurants we went to in our new neighborhood was the Casa di Pizza over on Elmwood Avenue and Hodge Street. We went there mostly for the chicken wings and it had a good bar.

There was also a night club upstairs in the banquet room where they had a DJ playing disco and new wave music on weekends.

We went to this restaurant a lot in the 80's and 90's. I remember taking Betsy, Joe, Chris and Sara there one time when they were visiting us in Buffalo. We went for the chicken wings. Over the years we stopped going there as their pizza quality declined and Mr. Pizza and Just Pizza got more of our business. 

The Casa di Pizza on Elmwood Avenue was one of the longest standing independent pizza restaurants in Western New York operating since 1953. Over the years it expanded with multiple dining rooms, a full service bar and banquet hall. During the 1980's the upstairs banquet hall had for a time became the Elmwood Village Disco with the theme motto... "the only place you go up to get down". 

They eventually closed the Elmwood Avenue restaurant in 2015 and opened a new one downtown on Mohawk Street called JJ's Casa di Pizza.