An Italian restaurant has said “Arrivederci!” to Tarentum.

More specifically, Al Colelli said he decided to move his new restaurant, Totaro’s, from Tarentum to Arnold before it ever opened.

Originally, Colelli was planning to open his restaurant in a space on East Sixth Avenue.

Colelli now plans to open Totaro’s at 1611 Fifth Ave. in Arnold. Previously home to the Lighthouse Ministries’ soup kitchen, Lighthouse Ministries still owns the building, which has apartments on the upper floor.

The location is next door to P&M Pizza, owned by Colelli’s friend, Phil McKinley.

Instead of competing with each other, Colelli said he and McKinley will work together.

“If someone wants something I don’t have and they do, I’ll send them over to P&M,” Colelli said. “They’re the ones that inspired me.”

McKinley, who reopened P&M in 2008 with his wife, Dawn, said he welcomes more restaurants, even one that may appear to be direct competition. He said he had shared customers with Ida’s Place, an Italian restaurant that was on the other side of his building until it was destroyed by fire in 2016.

“I’d like to make this restaurant row and make it a destination point for people. My customers, they come from all over,” he said. “He’ll have his identity, we have ours.”

Colelli named his restaurant after his mother, using her maiden name.

With P&M being primarily a pizzeria, Colelli said he’s undecided on whether he’ll have pizza on his menu.

Otherwise, Colelli said, the menu largely will be the same as he had planned for Tarentum, including chicken salads, steak hoagies, prosciutto sandwiches, hot sausage, rigatoni and stuffed banana peppers.

What will be different, he said, are his plans to offer a breakfast buffet with breakfast sandwiches to-go.

With being open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Colelli said, they may open as early as 5 a.m. for breakfast and be open until 10 or 11 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and closed on Sundays and Mondays.

“I hope he does well,” McKinley said.

An exact date for Totaro’s opening has not been announced.

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