Lisa’s Deli Is Not Closing: Otto Strada’s Owners Are Taking Over the Hoboken Landmark

For months, the question hanging over uptown Hoboken was a simple one: what happened to Lisa’s Deli? The Italian deli at 901 Park Avenue, a neighborhood fixture since December 1971, closed over the summer the way it always did. Then summer ended, September came, and the doors stayed shut. The phone stopped working, online ordering went dark, and a rental listing for the address that had surfaced back in March started looking less like a mistake and more like the end. Hoboken has watched this movie before, and it usually does not have a happy ending.

This time it does. Lisa’s Deli is not closing. Nick Rutigliani, a Hoboken native and co-owner of Otto Strada, and his business partner Dante Amato have taken over the business from the Lisa family. The name stays Lisa’s Deli. The plan is a refreshed space, a smaller and tighter menu, and the old school deli roots kept exactly where they belong. The team is targeting a January 2027 reopening, though no exact date has been set yet.

The fit makes sense the moment you hear how it came together. Dante Amato is friends with the Lisa family, and that relationship helped carry the transition. The family was ready to close its chapter running the deli after more than five decades. Rutigliani, who grew up in Hoboken, saw what was about to be lost. The closure of Losurdo’s, another longtime Hoboken Italian deli, was fresh on his mind, and he was not interested in watching a second institution disappear on his watch. “We know Lisa’s is a landmark in Hoboken; why not keep it going?” he told The Hoboken Girl, adding that the goal is to keep Lisa’s going for another 30 to 40 years.

Lisa’s was founded by Pietro and Caterina Lisa, whose family roots with the deli name go back to Monte San Giacomo, Italy, and later run by their sons Tony and Angelo. For generations of Hoboken families, it was simply the deli: heroes piled high, breakfast sandwiches in the morning, imported Italian products on the shelves, catering when the occasion called for it. Above all, it was known for its house made fresh mozzarella, good enough that Lisa’s was a staple of Hoboken Mutz Fest for more than a decade in a city that takes its mutz very, very seriously.

One detail should make longtime regulars breathe easier. Maria Lisa still owns the building and lives upstairs. The family will no longer run the business day to day, but she is not going anywhere, and neighbors can still expect to see her around the shop that carries her family’s name.

What changes under the new owners is scale, not soul. A smaller menu is the headline move, and for a deli that tried to be everything to everyone for 50 years, focus is probably the right call. Expect the refreshed space to keep the familiar neighborhood feel while the menu leans into the items that built the reputation: the heroes, the breakfast sandwiches, and that fresh mozzarella, which now has a Mutz Fest legacy to live up to under new hands.

There is also a nice symmetry in who is doing the saving. Otto Strada, at 743 Park Avenue, knows something about coming back: the restaurant rebuilt and reopened after a fire closed it in early 2025. Now its owners are the ones bringing a neighbor back from the brink.

For now, the doors at 901 Park Avenue stay closed while the refresh gets done, and January 2027 is the date to circle. Hoboken spent most of 2026 bracing to say goodbye to Lisa’s Deli. Instead, the city gets to say welcome back.