After 57 years on the same East Vancouver corner, one of the neighbourhood’s oldest restaurants has served its last pizza.
Trocadero, the family-run pizza and steak house at 2411 Nanaimo Street, closed for good after its final dinner service on May 24.
If you grew up anywhere near Nanaimo and Broadway, you already know this room.
Trocadero opened back in 1969 as a small takeout spot, and the family grew it into the red-booth, brick-archway institution that a lot of East Van kids had their first pizza in.
For decades it was the spot for birthdays, baptisms, retirement parties, and championship-team dinners, usually with the Canucks, Whitecaps, or Lions on the screens.
The closure is not about business slowing down.
In a post earlier this year, the family explained that they had sold the building about three years ago, with a three-year lease in place while redevelopment plans moved ahead.
As of June, the title officially changed hands, and their time at the Nanaimo Street location ran out.
The goodbye came in stages.
The last three dine-in services were held May 22, 23, and 24, and the family asked regulars to book a table and come say goodbye in person.
About a week later, Marino, who runs the restaurant with his siblings, posted a video to mark handing over the keys.
He said the space is being taken over by two Korean women who are turning Trocadero into a daycare, which he called beautiful.
“The building will still be here,” he said, “so when you drive by, you can still say, ‘Hey, that’s the place I had my first pizza,’ or ‘That’s where my team went when we won the championship.'”
He thanked the community on behalf of the family and signed off with “till next time.”
That “till next time” is doing a lot of work.
In an earlier post, the family said they are already looking for a new location and promised more news in the weeks ahead.
So this may not be the end of Trocadero so much as the end of this building.
For now, though, the red booths and oil paintings at Nanaimo and 8th are done.
The comments on their farewell posts read like a neighbourhood scrapbook, full of people who got engaged there, worked there, or spent childhood weekends in those booths.
Fifty-seven years is a long time to feed one corner of a city.
Trocadero now joins a list of recently closed Vancouver food spots like Pokey Okey Kingsway, Kosoo Cardero, and Hem377.
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Address: 2411 Nanaimo Street, Vancouver, BC