Pizzeria

It took a little negotiating and a little hard work, but Wissinoming is going to have another pizza parlor. Benedict Veleno told the Zoning Board of Adjustment that he thought it was all going to be simple when he and his wife bought the building at 5536 Torresdale Ave. They thought all they would have to do was put in the equipment and open for business, he said. After all, the shop on the northwest corner of the intersection with Anchor Street had housed everything from a flea market to a dog-grooming salon.

His father says Serdar Tatar is not a terrorist. But federal authorities said yesterday that Tatar used a pizza delivery job - at his father's eatery - to scout Fort Dix as part of a terror plot to kill soldiers there. And he allegedly provided five co-conspirators with a fort map from the Cookstown restaurant. Yesterday, in the quiet communities around Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base, news of the suspected terror plot so close to home rattled the nerves of soldiers and area residents alike.

A Philadelphia man was arrested early Sunday in connection with the armed robbery of the Pizzeria Uno restaurant at 1676 E. Lancaster Ave., where the manager and an employee were bound hand and foot. Derrick L. Jefferson, 23, of the 6000 block of Wheeler Street, was caught with $1,600 cash and two handguns near the Paoli train station about 2:30 a.m. and later was identified by the restaurant manager, said Tredyffrin Police Sgt. Joseph Carbo. "I think he was trying to catch the train to go back home," Carbo said yesterday.

Police and fire investigators said two men apparently set fire to a West Oak Lane pizzeria yesterday and nearly killed themselves in the process. Firefighters were called to Pizza 2000 on the 6300 block of Ogontz Avenue shortly before 5 a.m. After putting out the blaze, which destroyed much of the one-story building, they discovered the remnants of 38 Molotov cocktails inside and of 20 more in a dumpster outside. Within a half-hour, two North Philadelphia men were found in different locations, each about a mile from the pizza shop and each burned over more than half of his body.

The 63-year-old owner of a Southwest Philadelphia pizza shop, whose customers said he had been held up numerous times, was fatally shot last night when two men tried to rob his store, police said. Nicholas Tzimas of Upper Darby was pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania about 40 minutes after the 8 p.m. shooting in the Kingsessing section. Detectives said the owner and a female employee were working inside 54th St. Pizza, in the 5400 block of Chester Avenue, when two men in ski masks entered the take-out store.

Much is happening around Mullica Hill. If you haven't been there in a few years, you might be surprised to see shopping centers and McMansions on former fields of green. For some reason, new development does not always bring with it new restaurants. I have driven miles through developing municipalities in search of something to eat. I was pleased to find Toscana Pizzeria & Grill in a shopping area on Bridgeton Pike, not too far from a new Eagles enclave. It's been there three years, but it was new to me. The decor places you in the Italian countryside.

They knew him simply as "Pop. " Neighbors of the popular old Italian man, who for 20 years had owned and run Vincent's Pizza at 50th and Thompson streets, didn't know Orlando Rampa as anything but. So after word spread that he had been murdered, all one heard on the streets around Rampa's store were wails of "Pop is dead. They killed Pop. " Distraught neighbors, crying and sobbing, gathered around the bound, gagged and badly beaten body of the 69-year-old man after it was removed from the walk-in refrigerator where police found it about 9 a.m. yesterday.

Mayor Goode last week vetoed a bill that would have allowed a Castor Avenue pizza restaurant to build an enclosed cafe extending onto a sidewalk. Although Goode has a history of opposing such encroachments on public property, the veto Thursday was a relief to civic groups that have opposed the cafe proposal for more than two years. The veto was a blow to the bill's sponsor, Councilman Jack Kelly. He said he had hoped the mayor would find merit in the bill and change his position, just as Kelly recently changed his position to support Goode's veto of required item-pricing on food.

As the November opening approaches for South Jersey's first Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Deptford, one wonders how Al Belmont of Turnersville can run a competing restaurant named Captain Good Times. Because the times may turn sour very soon. Belmont, 45, who owns and operates the Captain Good Times Party Center in Turnersville's Whitman Plaza, said his business might be ruined when the corporate-backed and very popular Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater moved into the Deptford Court shopping center - a 10-minute drive away.

A West Philadelphia pizzeria owner was beaten to death yesterday by robbers who bound him and stuffed his body into a freezer, police said. A second man, an exterminator who was in the basement of Vincent's Pizza Shop at 5000 W. Thompson St. and surprised the intruders, also was tied up but was not injured, according to police. Orlando Rampa, 69, was pronounced dead about 9:30 a.m. at Presbyterian- University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Police were summoned to the pizzeria after the exterminator was able to free himself and awakened Rampa's wife, who was asleep in the couple's apartment above the store.