Fire damages popular East Side eatery

St. Paul's East Side can do without a scare like this.

Yarusso's, the Italian eatery that has been a Payne Avenue mainstay since 1933, was damaged in a Thursday night fire that broke out above the kitchen and left a huge chunk of the dining room ceiling ripped apart. Damages were estimated at $140,000, Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said.

On Friday, chairs were stacked outside -- bar-close-style. But Annette Yarusso, wife of co-owner Mike Yarusso, said there was no fear of a permanent shutdown. Yarusso's should reopen within about three months, she said: "Definitely, definitely, it's not a question."

At the time of the fire, there were but three nights left in a month-long $2 Dago-sandwich special.

For generations of East Siders, Yarusso's holds nostalgic charm, a place where grown-ups can recall meals with fathers, mothers and uncles, but where today the Frank Sinatra fans make room for motorcycle enthusiasts. On its walls are posters for "The Godfather" and the annual Sturgis bike rally.

At Morelli's liquor store and meat market, just across the street from Yarusso's, Jim Morelli, 57, made boxes available Friday to volunteers clearing the inside of the restaurant for its eventual scrub down. Like Mike and Fred Yarusso, Morelli is a third-generation owner. He said that the East Side can ill afford to lose landmarks and that Yarusso's brings value to a "mature" neighborhood with challenges.

With his son Matthew, 28, working on a computer behind him, Morelli spoke of family tradition and of how a fourth generation of Yarussos was working across the street, too. He said that he remembered Mike and Fred from when they were just boys growing up in a house behind the restaurant.

And would he stick around, too?

"Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise," Morelli said. "We're just like the Yarussos -- we're here every day."

According to Zaccard, the fire started about 7:30 p.m. in the kitchen's ventilation system. It spread to the wood frame in a drop ceiling, requiring firefighters to cut holes in the roof to get at the flames, he said.

There was fire damage in the kitchen, Zaccard said, and smoke damage through the rest of the building.

Inside the restaurant Friday, friends of the Yarussos were packing framed pictures taken from the dining-room walls. Annette Yarusso said it was too early to say whether anything valuable had been damaged. But she did have duplicates of many of the family photos, she said.

About a mile up Payne Avenue from Yarusso's, the fire was the talk of the cafe Friday at another family-run institution: Serlin's. Waitress Candy Lyons, 35, a lifelong East Sider, said that if anyone could make a restaurant reopening happen, it was the Yarussos.

"They're a strong family," she said. "They'll pull through it."