For the second time in the span of two years, 3401 Riopelle Street is up for sale — this time, $1.5 million under its original asking price. Today, the address is home to the classic Italian restaurant, Amore da Roma, with a rich history in the city of Detroit.
In July 2017, Roma Café, the former restaurant space at 3401 Riopelle and one of Detroit’s longest standing Italian restaurants, shuttered after 127 years of continuous service, when owner Janet Sossi Belcoure announced she’d made the difficult decision to retire. The restaurant business had been in her family’s care since 1918. Soon after its closing, Guy Pelino, chef of three years at Café Roma, stepped in to keep the restaurant’s legacy alive.
Pelino signed a 10-year lease to take over
the iconic piece of real estate in the heart of Eastern Market. A seasoned chef with 14 years under his belt at Mario’s Restaurant in Midtown, he aimed to keep the integrity of the recipes that powered the menu at Roma Café, with minor tweaks, with a renovation to the physical space.
“Having a chef that cooked there for 3 ½ to 4 years and has done amazing things and knows my customers, it’s the easiest transition as possible,” Sossi Belcoure told the Free Press at the time.
Pelino reopened the restaurant as the rebranded Amore da Roma December 2017.
“When I took over, I put quite a bit of work into it to update it without changing too much,” Pelino told the Free Press on Oct. 2. Despite Pelino’s improvements, the building, built in the 1800s, not surprisingly, requires significant work.
O’Connor Real Estate listed the property at 3401 Riopelle in September, detailing the building's history and highlighting the notables who passed through the dining room over the years — including, according to the listing, “Frank Sinatra, Taylor Swift, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr. and Desi Arnaz, along with presidents, governors and generations of Detroiters.”
The $500,000 sticker price is a significant decrease from the previous $2 million ask in 2024, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. It includes the building, which is 5,603 square feet and sits on just shy of 3/4 an acre of land, as well as on-site parking and additional lots. Offers for the property are due Oct. 9.
For Pelino, an acquisition of the building is bittersweet. As he approaches his 68th birthday in February, the chef-owner says he’d likely be facing retirement at the end of Amore da Roma’s 10-year lease in July 2027. For prospective owners interested in maintaining a restaurant business at the property, Pelino offers up the possibility of serving as a consultant to help pass down recipes to, once again, keep the history of Roma Café and Amore da Roma alive. As the restaurant’s name suggests, after all, his efforts were for the love of Roma Café.
“We still have generations of families that come here and people in their 80s who have been coming here since they were 5,” Pelino told the Free Press on Friday.
In an ideal scenario, Pelino said, he would be happy to see a local Italian chef step in to take over the business, keeping Italian cuisine at the Eastern Market landmark for years to come, just as he did nearly decade ago: “There are a lot of memories for a lot of people in this place. It’s be a shame to see it go by the wayside.”
Contact Detroit Free Press Dining and Restaurant Critic Lyndsay C. Green at: LCGreen@freepress.com. Follow @LadyLuff on Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for extras and insider scoops on Detroit-area dining.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Eastern Market building for sale: What it means for restaurant Amore da Roma
