Astoria’s legendary La Guli Pastry Shop has served its final cannoli after nearly nine decades on Ditmars Boulevard. The family-run bakery, a fixture since 1937, is now closed for good. Its sudden disappearance leaves one of the neighborhood’s oldest food traditions without a next chapter.
The New York Post reported Thursday that La Guli had permanently closed after 89 years. The shop had previously been described as temporarily closed because of family matters, but a workman at the site said the bakery was gone; the reason for the permanent closure has not been made public.
La Guli’s own history traces the business to Paolo Notaro, who immigrated from Palermo and opened the Astoria shop with his brothers in 1937. The bakery says it has remained in the same location ever since, with original woodwork, shelves and terrazzo flooring still part of the storefront.
A Ditmars Boulevard Fixture Built On Cannoli And Cookies
For generations of Queens customers, La Guli was the place for Sicilian-style cannoli, tricolor cookies, Italian ices, cakes and other old-school pastries. Its long-running menu also included homemade gelato, pignoli cookies and specialty cakes, giving the shop a broad dessert-case appeal beyond its signature cannoli.
The bakery was not only old; it was deeply woven into neighborhood memory. A profile from the Queens Economic Development Corporation highlighted owner Maria Notaro, her family’s Sicilian roots and the generations of Astorians who remembered buying pastries, bread and cookies there.
La Guli also occasionally made the pastry case wonderfully topical. The Post reported that the bakery created a Pope Francis cookie in 2015 and later commemorated Pope Leo XIV’s ascension with a shortbread cookie, alongside its legendary holiday gingerbread houses.
There is no announced reopening date or public explanation for why the 89-year run ended. For Astoria, the loss is bigger than one empty storefront: La Guli was one of those rare places where a box of cookies came with a family history, a neighborhood memory and a very specific taste of Queens.
