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Read the press release here.

Original Ray's Pizza Rationing Supplies for Last Slices

By Andrea Swalec | October 29, 2011 6:25pm
Ray's Pizza staff pulled a huge pie out of the oven just days before they were set to close on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011.
Ray's Pizza staff pulled a huge pie out of the oven just days before they were set to close on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011.
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DNAinfo/Andrea Swalec

NOLITA — The original Ray's Pizza on Prince Street that spawned dozens of imitators citywide is conserving supplies to try to give fans their final slices before the shop closes on Sunday, according to manager Helen Mistretta.

"We'll serve $1.50 slices on Sunday if there's anything left," she said. 

After more than 50 years in business, the 27 Prince St. pizza counter and adjacent restaurant by the same name will close following a legal dispute with the building's landlord. 

"To see these two places close is a nightmare," said a teary eyed server who provided her name only as Barbara and said she grew up in the building. 

She said the restaurant had been full all night Friday. 

"We've been getting constant, steady customers who can't get enough of this place. They're coming until the end," she said. 

NoLita resident John Mooney, 33, stopped in to buy four slices.

"I've been coming here for 15, 20 years," he said. "It's the best." 

Mooney said he would go to the restaurant as many times as he could over the weekend before it closed. 

Harlem resident Ian Aveytua said he had gone to Ray's many times since he discovered it exactly a year ago. He said the other "Ray" restuarant in the city, including Original Ray's, Famous Ray's, Original Famous Ray's and Not Ray's, don't exist for him. 

"I've been loyal to only this Ray's," Aveytua said. 

Ralph Cuomo opened the pizzeria in 1959. "Nobody ever called me Ralph," he told the New York Times in 1991.

He was investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegedly conducting mafia business at Ray's, the Times reported

After Cuomo died in 2008, Mistretta, who is Cuomo's cousin, and Lorraine Marini, who was Cuomo's girlfriend, took over the business in 2009, the New York Post reported and city Department of Finance records confirm. 

Building owner Cheryl Sorrentino filed lawsuits against Mistretta and Marini claiming they owned her rent money. The lawsuit was filed in 2009 and settled this year, according to Manhattan Supreme Court records

Server Nuri Beltre said she was too sad to cry about the closing of Ray's, where she said she had worked for 23 years. 

"In all honesty, I'm in shock," she said. "I tell the customers 'I'll see you," not 'goodbye' because I don't believe it's really happening." 

Sorrentino did not respond to inquiries about the future of 27 Prince St. No new Department of Buildings permits or State Liquor Authority licenses are on file for the address.

Mistretta she she has been looking for locations at which to reopen the shop, but that its equipment will be auctioned off Wednesday.

"That's it. It's the end of an era," she said.