The Toscana succession: a Florida chain's coal oven, a beer festival, and the independent who kept the fire

2008–PRESENT · 201 FLORENCE AVENUE AND THE PIAZZA

Toscana Park's second restaurant room has had two keepers and one oven. Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza — a Florida chain whose first unit opened at Estero in the summer of 2008, founded by three Michigan men, Chuck Senatore, George Kurajian, and Tony Sacco, around a thousand-degree anthracite coal oven and a no-freezers, no-fryers pledge — stood at 201 Florence Avenue in Toscana Park by March 2015, when the Tribune's account of the park's coming hotel described a new building rising "just west of Tony Sacco's Pizza." That spring the restaurant played host, with Mattson's Custom Catering, to the ground's one documented food-and-drink festival: the inaugural Indiana-Michigan Craft Beer Mayfest, May 2, 2015, under tents in Toscana Park's central plaza, over a hundred ales and lagers on pour for two charities. The Granger restaurant's own opening year stands in the gaps roll (GAP-FOOD-2); its closing belongs to its parent company's collapse — Dynamic Restaurant Holdings, which had taken a majority stake in the concept in 2017, filed for bankruptcy in September 2022 — and the exact date the Florence Avenue room went dark is not in the record reached. The directory record of 2026 prints the address's Tony Sacco's as permanently closed.

The room did not stay dark, and the fire did not change. In October 2023, JC's Coal Oven Pizza Co. opened in "the Toscana spot formerly held by another pizzeria," as the trade press carried the Tribune's report — an independent house, its owner Jesse and his fiancée Jamie named in the review record, keeping the coal oven and making the keepership itself the pitch: "Michiana's best and first coal fired pizza," in the house's own words, a claim printed here as the house's own, in a room whose oven a chain installed. The review record runs the new house through the winter of 2025–26 — open specially on a Monday for the Indiana–Miami championship game — and one current directory listing flags it "possibly temporarily closed"; both print, and the flag stands as a flag. Around the succession, the park's wider table assembled in the same years, at chronology size: Smoothie King, whose operator was planning a July opening in the spring of 2015; Sassy's Gourmet Burgers, standing in the Notre Dame lodging record's roster of the plaza by 2018 and printing in later menu directories as Sassy's Sandwich Shack Burgers and More; a Starbucks, in the same 2018 roster; Vanilla Bean Creamery and the Holiday Inn Express at 224 Florence Avenue, carried in their own entries and the Hotels leg respectively. A developer's piazza, an Italian family's anchor, a chain's oven, a festival, a bankruptcy, and a local resurrection: Toscana's table is the corridor era in miniature, and it is the only one of the corridor's nodes whose food story has a second act.

Sources:

1. Foodservice Equipment Reports (FER Magazine), "Design: 1,000 Degrees of Pizza" (2013): the chain's Estero founding, summer 2008; Senatore, Kurajian, and Sacco; the coal oven and the concept's form. The chain's own published copy (tonysaccos.com; its Granger job listings): the Toscana Park seat and the no-freezers pledge.
2. South Bend Tribune, March 8, 2015 (carried by Hotel Online): the Holiday Inn Express proposal at Toscana Park; Tony Sacco's standing; the Smoothie King building and its planned July opening.
3. Indiana on Tap, April 14, 2015: the inaugural Indiana-Michigan Craft Beer Mayfest, May 2, 2015, 201 Florence Ave., hosted by Mattson's Custom Catering and Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza.
4. QSR Magazine, September 15, 2022: Dynamic Restaurant Holdings' bankruptcy; the 2017 majority purchase of Tony Sacco's; the concept's state.
5. Pizza Marketplace news record, October 20, 2023: "JC's Coal Oven Pizza Co. has opened in the Toscana spot formerly held by another pizzeria, according to a South Bend Tribune report." JC's own published copy ("Michiana's best and first coal fired pizza"); its review record through early 2026, its owner named; one directory's "possibly temporarily closed" flag, printed as found.
6. University of Notre Dame athletics lodging record (fightingirish.com, 2018): the Toscana Park plaza roster — Tony Sacco's, Sassy's Gourmet Burgers, Starbucks, Martin's — as printed; menu-directory record for Sassy's Sandwich Shack Burgers and More, Granger.