Barely a week went by when Serdar Dede and his family didn’t visit Abruzzi’s Cafe 422. When they came in, homemade bread with hot peppers and oil was brought to their table without fail, he said last week.

After working for years in the restaurant and hospitality business, including as dining room captain on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship line and managing the upscale Chophouse in Howland, Dede set his sights high. The Turkish immigrant wanted to call Cafe 422 his own.

“I have been in the business, I went to school for it, and I worked for some nice hotels and restaurants all over the world. Being in this business sometimes you come to the point where you question yourself. Do you want to work for someone continuously, or do you want to work for yourself?” Dede said last week as he sipped hot coffee in a corner booth of the restaurant that this year will mark its 75th anniversary.

There was a challenge, though. The restaurant had been in the Abruzzi family for decades, and the latest owner, Robert Abruzzi, son of co-founder Guerino “Greenie” Abruzzi, wasn’t thinking much about selling it.

“They had worked together in some of the bootleg establishments way back in the 1930s,” Robert Abruzzi recalled last week with a chuckle. He was speaking of his father and his father’s friend, Orazio Rossi. “Mr. Rossi played saxophone and my dad played trumpet. They would get together and play duets.”

Then in 1939, they decided it was time to realize their dream. Abruzzi said the two “borrowed and begged and raised $1,000,” the amount needed to lease a small space near what would eventually become Eastwood Mall and what some have described as the best-known strip of locally run restaurants in Ohio.

By 1949, the partners were able to purchase land closer to Warren and build a new restaurant on the location where it stands today.

“Nobody encouraged them. Everybody said ‘it’s too far away from town,’ or ‘who’s going to drive that far?’ There was no such thing as the Strip,” Abruzzi said, referring to the nearly three-mile stretch of U.S. 422 that became prominent after World War II for its string of fine-dining restaurants.

“There was every reason not to do it, but they ignored that, and it was an instant success,” Abruzzi said. “GM was just getting started in Lordstown, and the Strip was getting developed. The McKinley Players were going full blast. It was an exciting time.”

In 1963, Rossi died, and one year later Abruzzi joined his father in the business after studying restaurant management at Michigan State University. They would worked together nearly 30 years, until his father passed away in 1994.

“Otherwise, he’d still be there,” he said, noting he expected also to keep working for years to come.

So when Abruzzi was approached in 2006 by Dede, whom he had never met, it came as a surprise.

“I wasn’t even thinking of retirement,” Abruzzi said. “But I was maybe 63 or 64. I knew he had trained in the business, and it’s hard to sell a restaurant.”

And so he heard him out, and soon the restaurant changed hands. Dede, of Girard, partners at the establishment with his younger brother, Erdal Dede.

“We are both here seven days a week for the most part,” he said. “We have lots of regular guests. We know we get the same faces, no matter what. That’s a compliment to the restaurant, and they become our friends. They become our family.”

Since taking it over, the Dedes have added a patio and renovated the entire restaurant. They also have opened a second Cafe 422 restaurant at the corner of South Avenue and Western Reserve Road in Boardman, employing about 80 people between the two locations.

“It takes a lot of hard work and dedication, and good people around you,” Dede said, noting he believes Abruzzi was confident the restaurant’s success would continue under his leadership.

“He has been coming here very often and checking on me. He has been very good to us, and so far, everything I hear from him has been good,” Dede said.

And why shouldn’t it? Cafe 422’s success has remained. In fact, it’s among the last of the well-known local fine restaurants like Cherry’s Top o’ the Mall, Alberini’s, Living Room and Chieffo’s that once lined the Strip.

“There was no place in the state that had restaurants like this,” Abruzzi recalled. “It’s a fact.”

When asked if he thinks his father ever could have envisioned this success 75 years ago, Abruzzi said, “I don’t know if he ever gave that a thought. All he ever did was work real hard and do the best he could.

“We are so proud of it, really,” Abruzzi said. “It’s bittersweet that it’s not in our family anymore, but we are happy that it’s still carrying on and being a success.”

Dede says he hopes that success continues for a long time.

“We want to be here another 75 years,” Dede said.

To help mark the anniversary, the locations will host 75th anniversary galas Sept. 27 in Warren and Oct. 4 in Boardman.

blinert@tribtoday.com