Waterford ― Fifteen years after he worked at Waterford Pizza Palace, an institution here for six decades, a former cook has reopened the closed business.

Luis Solis, who also owns Solis Pizza in Preston, reopened the Boston Post Road pizza shop on Aug. 23. It had been closed since the winter.

“A lot of the locals around here know the place,” cook and server Esteban Solis, his son, said last week.

“I remember the first two days we were open. People were calling and saying ‘are you really open?’,” he said.

The building is owned by Eleftheria Hronis and the estate of Antigoni Nicolaou, according to town records. Hronis could not be reached for comment, but Day archives show the restaurant has been around since 1962. Luis Solis started working for Hronis back in 2008 as a cook.

Back then, Solis said he had always dreamed of opening his own pizza place. Now, he’s got two of them.

“It’s really great,” Solis said, sitting in one of the restaurant’s nine leather booths. “My dream has come true.”

“It’s been a couple years, but I’ll say this place has improved,” resident Isabella Lidestri, who visited the restaurant in its previous iteration, said Tuesday afternoon.

The previous owner, Joshua O’Dell, wanted out at the end of 2022, Esteban Solis said.

Lidestri sat with fellow resident and pizza palace first-timer Zeb Dexter as they ate a cheese pizza.

“It tastes like they put time and effort into this,” Dexter said.

“This has got to be one of the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten,” Waterford resident Liz Culpepper said as she dined at a nearby booth. “Their meatball pizza had “the right amount of everything.”

d.drainville@theday.com

Editor’s note: This version corrects the ownership of the Waterford Pizza Plaza building.