Had Nebraska favorite Valentino’s started in Omaha, it would be the second oldest pizza joint in town behind only La Casa. As it stands, it the oldest in its hometown of Lincoln and among the oldest in the state.
The story starts once Valentine (Val) and Providence (Zina) Weiler accepted a $500 loan from a relative who suggested that they turn the store into a pizzeria. This decision was due to the increased pressure they were facing from supermarket chains that continued to pop up all over town. After they finished remodeling, the new restaurant had just enough room for 10 tables while the kitchen took up the other half of the building.
Pizza was still a pretty new thing in not only Lincoln but the midwest in general so this decision was not a slam dunk. In fact, there were only three restaurants serving the dish in town. Fortunately the couple had some experience in the restaurant business as Val operated a bar and grill called Val’s Buffet until 1947. Zina, meanwhile, had at her disposal a family recipe for a pizza sauce.
While Zina loved to cook and was quite good at it, she had never cooked pizza before. As a result, she spent a considerable amount of time in the kitchen until she got the pizza crust just right and tweaked the sauce recipe until it was the ideal combination of sweet with just a touch of spice.
They borrowed three dozen pizza pans and wrote the menu on a piece of lined notebook paper that listed small pizzas for 75 cents and large pizzas for a buck. With that, they opened the doors to Valentino’s Italian Food at 3457 Holdrege St in 1957. They took out some advertisements in local newspapers announcing the arrival of the restaurant in order to build anticipation. On the first day, they sold a dozen pizzas. Little did the Weiler’s know that this little restaurant which was started merely as a way to survive would turn into a Lincoln institution.
The family made sacrifices in order to operate the restaurant. The long days consisted of Val arriving at 4 AM to make the dough while Zina made the sauces and cooked the meat. Fortunately they lived in a house behind the restaurant which allowed them to spend as much time at the restaurant as possible.
It paid off as the small restaurant often had customers waiting hours for what they claimed was the “greatest Italian food west of Naples.” Cars would cruise the neighborhood for parking spots. It got to the point where police officers occasionally directed the traffic that backed up in front of the building. They somehow managed to squeeze in five more tables before expanding the building to fit 48 tables in 1965. As a result of the long waits, the carryout business exploded especially after college students returned to campus.
By the time Zina’s health led the co-founders to sell the business in 1972, Val’s was THE pizza spot in Lincoln. The new owners were brothers Tony and Ron Messineo that the Weiler’s had known from Lincoln’s tight knit Italian community. Joined by cousin Mike Alessio, they first they managed the restaurant which led to them buying the business. They were adamant to keep the recipes “as is” since that is what made Val’s so popular and kept customers returning time and again.
The restaurant grew rapidly from that point forward. In 1975 the brothers were operating a second location at 70th and Van Dorn St while selling something like 900,000 pies per year. That started a period of expansion through franchising with Topeka being the first followed by an Omaha location at 132nd and Center. The first Grand Italian Buffet was opened in 1978 and by the early 1980s they began selling pizza by the slice which led to the first Val’s To-Go location in 1990.
After its namesake, Val, passed away in 1996, they started selling pizza which had already been served in Lincoln Public Schools at Nebraska football games as well. By that time Zina passed away in 2003, the pizza that she developed was literally everywhere. Even though Valentino’s is named after Valentine, it should be pointed out that Zina’s contribution to the restaurant was just as if not more significant. Without her recipes and talent for cooking, there would be no Valentino’s.
As of December 2023 there are 33 locations serving the pizza with a soft crust and its signature sweet sauce. While most of the locations are in Lincoln, there are a few in Omaha as well as Fremont, Grand Island, Kearney, La Visa, Nebraska City, Sioux Falls and many other small towns throughout Nebraska. While the original location at 3457 Holdredge was demolished in 2012, it continues to serve pizza nearby as the restaurant leases space on the ground floor of a three story mixed use building.
After more than 60 years, Val’s is still around and is just one of two pizzeria’s in the State of Nebraska in the Pizza Hall of Fame. The other one is La Casa, of course. Its current owner once said that the success of Valentino’s was due to timing, determination, willingness to take a gamble, quality of product, dedicated employees and hard work. Of its co-founder he said, “Zina was intuitively a great businessperson who always had a sense of what the customer wanted.”
Content written by Omaha Exploration. Feel free to leave a comment or a suggestion. Until then, keep exploring!
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