After 30 years, this Long Beach Island pizzeria needs a new home
A Slice of Heaven in Beach Haven, N.J., closed earlier this month. The owners leased their restaurant space and the building has been sold.
In the early ’90s, Colleen Mazzella walked into a newly opened pizzeria and met the man who would become not only her boss, but her husband.
She was visiting a friend who had been hired at Italian Affair in Stafford, and owner Dominick Mazzella, then a recent Staten Island transplant, offered her a job, too.
They soon became a couple, and a year later, in May 1995, opened A Slice of Heaven across from Fantasty Island Amusement Park on Long Beach Island. The building at 7th Street and Bay Avenue in Beach Haven had housed a car wash, candy store and photo shop through the years, and when the two met with owner Peter Buterick, “he said ‘I’m going to take a chance on you. I’ve got a good feeling about this,’” Mazzella said.
They made a name for themslves, thanks to a menu of dishes like stuffed cheesesteak pizza, scratch-made meatballs and cheesesteaks.
Thirty years later, the building is full of memories that became precious to Mazzella after Dominick died just days before his 50th birthday in 2024. She recalls the Stanley Cup being brought to the restaurant (“My husband was a gigantic hockey fan,” she said), staying open to serve pizza until 4 a.m. and borrowing ingredients from other restaurant owners to get through busy days.
She remembers when a family who lost their father stopped in for his favorite pizza before spreading his ashes on the beach, rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy sent four feet of water into the dining room and making pizza by flashlight during a power outage.
The restaurant is also where Dominick taught his son to make pizza, a legacy the 18-year-old — also named Dominick — has dreamed of continuing.
But it will have to happen somewhere else, as A Slice of Heaven closed earlier this month. The Mazzellas leased their restaurant space and the building has been sold.
“The plan was to take this place over,” Mazzella said of her and her husband’s plans for their son, a third-generation pizza maker whose grandfather emigrated from Naples, Italy, and owned restaurants in New York before opening the Stafford pizzeria with Dom.
A Slice of Heaven’s last day in business was Nov. 17, and Mazzella must vacate the building by the end of the month. She has been searching for a new location since learning of the impending sale several years ago, and while she wants to keep the restaurant on Long Beach Island, rentals that will work for her business are hard to come by, she said.
“My intention is to be on the island,” said Mazzella, who grew up in Brant Beach and now lives in Cedar Run on the mainland. “I love the people here. I grew up here. I love everything about it.”
“It’s just a fact of finding a place to land,” she said. “It’s been tough. I just have to keep believing that the places that I found that didn’t work out didn’t work out for a reason, and that it’s because we’re waiting for the right place.”
“We’ll find something,” she said. “I gotta believe that.”
Since announcing the closing date in early November, Mazzella has seen an outpouring of support online and in person, with customers sharing memories and well wishes.
One spoke of how the elder Dominick fulfilled her request to spell “It’s a boy!” in pepperoni on a pizza for her gender reveal. Another customer wrote of how the restaurant’s delivery driver checked on her elderly father when she couldn’t reach him. Dozens more said A Slice of Heaven’s pizza is part of their vacation tradition.
For Mazzella, it is stories like these that make giving up not an option.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “We’re not done.”