Italian pastry shop La Guli, a beloved Astoria institution since 1937, has served its last gingerbread house.
Third-generation owner and chief baker Maria Notaro posted on Facebook on Sunday that the store was “temporarily” closed due to “family matters.”
However, neighbors in the colorful Queens neighborhood were saddened to find the space at 29-15 Ditmars Blvd. stripped of its well-aged wood, tile and glass counters that for generations displayed Sicilian-style cannolis, tricolor cookies and Italian ices.
Gone, too, will be legendary holiday-season gingerbread houses with crackling icing on tops the cooks made from scratch.
A workman confirmed Wednesday, “It’s gone,” as he wheeled out remnants of the atmospheric bakery.
One devotee said the store’s scents of butter and sugar “smelled more like Italy than anything at Eataly.”
“Growing up on Steinway Street, my father would be in there every Sunday. He’d bring home a half-dozen cannoli and millefoglie” until he passed away at 92 in 2015, said former Astoria resident Joe Carella.
La Guli famously launched a “Pope Francis cookie” in 2015 in honor of the pontiff’s visit to the city. Nine years later, it commemorated the ascension of American-born Pope Leo XIV with a new shortbread cookie illustrated with an image of him waving from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The reason for the sudden closure wasn’t known. Notaro could not immediately be reached.
But the Astoria shopping district around the Ditmars Boulevard elevated station has seen a lot of upheaval in the past few years. Popular Italian restaurant L’Incontro around the corner from La Guli closed, among other changes.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
