Italo and Guiseppina Petrucci first opened the Central Cafe in 1933. Italo’s vision was to provide a quality, family run business producing fish and chips, and homemade Italian Ice Cream ( which is still made to this day) , a trade he learned not only by working in, but also in running the businesses of other Italian settlers who had taken time to go back to Italy to visit their own families.
Italo and Peppe; as she was affectionately known by the locals; were originally from Pianosinatico, a small village in Pistoia Province in the Appenine Mountains of Tuscany, where the family of today still regularly return to visit.
After retiring in 1962. Italo handed over the reigns to his daughter Tina who had helped her parents enormously over many, and sometimes difficult years, especially the time Italo had been interned by law and sent to the Isle of Man for eight months.
Later, as her parents were getting older, it seemed a natural transition for her to take over. along with her husband Bruno, they ran the Central Cafe successfully for a further 13 years, managing to raise a family of four along the way.
The cafe has since been handed down through all of Tina’s childen, and is currently in the capable hands of her youngest son, Paul, who since 1987, with his wife Elizabeth, has proudly carried on his grandfathers legacy.
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