If you order a pizza from Martino’s Italian Villa, you are literally eating a Martino’s pizza. That’s because only a Martino family member makes the restaurant’s iconic pizza pie. Every morning, Angela Martino and her son, Mike, whip up the crust and sauce from scratch, season the sausage and grate the cheese before it’s put into the oven.

That’s the way it's always been since Angela and her husband, Frank, founded their first restaurant in Kokomo in 1962. And that’s the way it’s going to stay. And that’s the reason the city’s oldest Italian restaurant earlier this month was inducted into the national Pizza Hall of Fame, which was established in 2005 by PMQ Pizza Magazine to showcase legendary pizzerias and the pizzaioli who have helped build America’s pizza culture.