Today, brothers Tony and Michael Panza operate a wildly successful Italian restaurant on South Broadway. But over the course of the last century, numerous establishments have borne the name Panza’s—so many, that Saratoga Lake was once described in a newspaper article as “a body of water surrounded by Panza’s.” None of the family’s establishments, which date back to a bakery that Tony and Michael’s great-grandmother, Theresa “Ma” Panza, operated in Mechanicville in 1897, was more famous than Panza’s Starlight Room.
Operating on Saratoga Lake from 1938 to the 1980s, when it became known as Panza’s or Panza’s on the Lake, Panza’s Starlight Room was more than a restaurant—it was a place to see and be seen. “Back before social media, there was Jeannette Jordan’s society column in the Saratogian,” Michael says. “Panza’s was in those, like, every week.” It was also a place to see live music. Jazz pianist Gap Mangione once took a break from his meal to perform for the room, and popular local band the Dave Jarvis Quartet had a summertime residency there. Another band to grace the stage was the Carmine DeCrescente Trio.
Yes, that Carmine DeCrescente.
“Playing clarinet is what he loved,” says Carmine DeCrescente III of his late grandfather, who played a pivotal role in growing DeCrescente Distributing Co. into the company Saratoga knows today.
“My dad’s band played together up to the early ’70s, so my best guess would be that this photo is from the mid-’60s,” says Carmine “CJ” DeCrescente II. But CJ’s father never forgot how to carry a tune on his clarinet; during his career, he was known to light up employee holiday parties and even jumped on stage with the live band at both his 80th and 90th birthday parties, not missing a beat.
“People were always amazed at how he could still be so good without any practice,” CJ says. “He loved playing whatever the tune was, but always seemed to play ‘Won’t you come home Bill Bailey’ whenever he had the chance.”
DeCrescente passed away at the age of 94 in 2021, and Panza’s shuttered its lakeside digs last year. But the legacy of both lives on—in the company DeCrescente left to his children, and the restaurant Ma Panza left to hers.