La Focaccia, the family-run Italian restaurant in San Antonio’s King William neighborhood, will serve its final meals on Saturday after a 30-year run, owner Luigi "Domenic" Ciccarelli announced. The restaurant at 800 S. Alamo St. will operate from roughly 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. through its closing day, giving regulars a last chance to enjoy wood-fired focaccia and traditional pastas. Opened in 1996, La Focaccia helped popularize wood-fired cooking and Italian wine in the city. Ciccarelli confirmed the closure and said he will retire, ending a three-decade chapter in King William, as reported by CultureMap San Antonio.
A Family Presence In San Antonio Dining
The Ciccarelli name has been on San Antonio menus for generations. Domenic’s parents, Luigi and Dolores Ciccarelli, ran Luigi’s Italian Restaurant on San Pedro Avenue for 24 years before launching La Focaccia. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Domenic put the La Focaccia property up for sale in 2016, describing the move at the time as part of an eventual retirement plan. Even after that listing, the family kept the doors open, the dough proofing and the wood-fired oven burning as the restaurant’s calling card.
Menu And Memories
La Focaccia’s menu leaned into Italian-American comfort: penne alla Siciliana, fettuccine Alfredo, veal scaloppini, along with wood-fired pizzas and the namesake focaccia. Several of the family’s recipes have been preserved online, and the restaurant’s recipes page still showcases a sampling of those classics alongside the King William address and hours. For many Southtown diners, those dishes and the ritual of watching the brick oven in action were as essential to the experience as the room’s old-school, everyone-knows-your-name hospitality.
What’s Next For The Building?
What comes next for the 1952 corner building that houses La Focaccia is still an open question. CultureMap San Antonio reports that the property was first offered for sale in 2016 and that the family renewed that effort in 2023. The site sits in prime King William territory, near newer destinations such as Mixtli and Pharm Table, which makes it a tempting prospect for buyers. Whether a future owner keeps the La Focaccia name alive or wipes the slate clean, any deal has the potential to reshape that corner of the neighborhood, although for now details are scarce.
As the final weekend approaches, staff and regulars have been trading memories and recipes both online and across the dining room’s well-worn tables. The Ciccarelli family has shared a note of thanks on the restaurant’s homepage, expressing gratitude to guests and employees for three decades of support. After Saturday, the doors will be locked, the oven will go cold, and Southtown will lose one of its oldest family-run Italian dining rooms.
