Vanessa Pellegrini stands in front of holiday gifts given to foster children in 2018.
For 15 years, the Pellegrini family, owner of Vittorio Restaurant and Pizzeria, has hosted an annual toy drive to benefit children who might not have gifts this holiday.
The January 7 Palisades fire destroyed the popular restaurant on Marquez Avenue, which had been in business for 41 years. The three owners, Mercedes Pellegrini and her daughters, Vanessa Pellegrini Henriques and Sabrina Pellegrini Kalaydjian, looked for a new site and discovered Santa Monica Canyon. The business was reborn as a little red trailer in Canyon Square in August.
But, the annual December toy drive and luncheon did not seem like it would be possible.
A reader wrote “This is the 16th year for the event. It was pretty much written off for this and the next few years, since the restaurant burned and so many residents were displaced, but amazingly at the last minute, people have stepped forward.”
With help from The Golden Bull Restaurant, the Sons of the American Legion, friends and some online support, donations are being accepted (including gift cards), through December 15. The annual luncheon for about 70 children will take place this December.
This benefit event began after Vanessa Pellegrini (daughter of Vittorio’s owner Mercedes) was diagnosed with CNS (central nervous system) lupus in December 2010 and hospitalized for two weeks.
“We weren’t sure I was going to pull through, since the disease was attacking the blood vessels in my brain,” Vanessa said. “My mother, being a devout Catholic, prayed to Nossa Senhora de Aparecida in Brazil. She performs miracles, according to local legend, and so my mother prayed.”
(Vanessa’s mother, Mercedes, was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and met her husband Ron while he was visiting Rio de Janeiro for Carnivale. The couple married, and Mercedes came to the United States, where she started Mercedes’ Continental Delights, a bakery in the San Fernando Valley. In 1984, she opened Vittorio’s with a partner, but when Giovanni Mazzola left to open a new restaurant in Malibu, Mercedes Pellegrini kept Vittorio’s.)
Mercedes’ prayers were answered and after a few weeks of intensive care in the hospital, Vanessa was sent home, well on the way to recovery.
“As an offering, we both promised to give back to the less fortunate children, who are innocent and oftentimes are the victims of circumstance,” Vanessa said. “I had worked with School on Wheels since 1999 and I was intimately involved with kids who were living in abused homes, homeless shelters and transitory houses. These were the children that were forgotten, and so, the Holiday Luncheon was born.”
The owners of Vittorios, Vanessa Pellegini Henriques (left), Mercedes Pellegrini (center) and Sabrina Pellegrini Kalaydjan at their new location in Santa Monica Canyon.
Photo: LEVI LANGEN
