Scittino’s opened on Edmonson Avenue in Catonsville in 1973 and has been a family-owned pizza and sub shop and Italian grocery store and deli at that location ever since. By the end of December, after 51 years, the beloved Italian eatery will open a second location on Falls Road in Roland Park.Andres Cabrera and Brad Black will be the co-general managers of the new location, and they spoke to Baltimore Fishbowl about transitioning to the new restaurant. Cabrera, current deli manager, has been at the Catonsville location for around eight or nine years and has lived in Catonsville since he was a young child. Black grew up in Ellicott City and has been at Scittino’s for one year and spent 18 years working at the Prime Rib restaurant in Downtown Baltimore.Photo courtesy Scittino’s.Cabrera emphasized that at the new location they will still have a fully functioning deli. Customers can still buy subs or artisan sandwiches, they will still have their grocery store section, and they can still expect the brands they’ve come to depend on Scittino’s for when it comes to their specialty Italian food ingredients.In addition to all of that, they will have a seated dining section with a fully functional bar where diners can get any kind of cocktail, wine, or beer that they would expect from a restaurant.The Schittino family (the “h” is silent) came to the United States from Sicily in 1958. Frank opened the deli in 1973. They dropped the “h” from the name of the deli since Americans mispronounced the name. They were able to pronounce “school” with a hard “c” sound, but kept pronouncing “Schittino” with a soft “sh” sound.Brother and sister team Sal and Josie Schittino ran the restaurant since their brother, Leo, passed away in the 1980s.“They were just so hands-on,” Black said. “I mean, Sal was in the deli every day. Josie was in the kitchen cooking every day.”After five decades as a singular family pizza shop, why branch out now?Cabrera told Fishbowl that they actually had tried once before to open a second location in nearby Howard County. That attempt at expansion was short-lived, though, and the family resumed focusing their attention solely on the Edmonson Avenue location.Several years ago, however, Scittino’s changed hands. Their nephew, Franco Schittino, who had his own career completely apart from the restaurant business, decided to buy the restaurant from Josie and Sal Schittino. “Franco’s injected some new ideas, creativity, financial capital,” Black said. “There’s certain things that need to kind of fall in line to even want to go down the road of expansion. … You got to get out of the kitchen if you want to open another spot.”Cabrera agreed.Photo courtesy of Scittino’s.“Josie and Sal are very old school Italian, like, work, work, work, work, earn your money,” Cabrera said. “So, I don’t think they really knew that side [of expansion.]”The Catonsville Scittino’s will remain as it is, but Franco has created a new iteration of the restaurant in the Falls Road location. There will still be focus on the Italian specialty market, including even more of the high-end items customers typically are not able to find elsewhere. There will be all Italian and Sicilian wines, a small retail section with niche, boutique items, and of course, an elevation of the plated meals.Black described the menu as “old world rustic,” with few ingredients and simple recipes that don’t take long to prepare. The price point for most dinners will be around the mid-$20s range unless a customer chooses something typically more costly, like a filet mignon.At the same time, Black noted that while the Catonsville Scittino’s is known for its pizzas and subs, it is underappreciated for the quality of its Italian market and the ingredients they use.“A lot of people don’t realize, like, ‘Hey, man, these guys are using top notch ingredients, fresh ingredients. They’re making their own sauce. They’re making their own dough,’” Black said. That is reflected in the cost of the pizza, but also in the taste. As a person born and bred Brooklyn, New York, this reporter feels qualified to make that assessment. The pizza from Catonsville Scittino’s is the absolute closest thing she has found to Brooklyn pizza this side of the Verrazzano Bridge. You can fold it in half like the good lord intended. After you fold it in half, before you eat it, you can pop the hood of your car and top off your oil with delicious orange grease that drips off the perfect tip of the slice and your car will run so smoothly (okay, maybe run that one by your mechanic first). No one who knows anything about pizza will eat the crust first. They will save it to savor it last, crunchy but chewy, filled with air bubbles. It could just as easily have come from Sal’s on Kings Highway and East 18th Street in New York City.Fortunately for all, pizza is still on the menu at the new location. The address for the second Scittino’s is 6241 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD.Scittino’s is hiring for nearly every role at the new location, including bartenders, baristas, servers, deli staff, pizza staff, kitchen staff, bussers, and chalkboard artists. Those interested in applying can email [email protected] .Scittino’s is hiring.