A Christmas night fire tore through a 58-year-old Brooklyn catering hall.

The three-alarm fire broke out a little before 7 p.m. on Friday on Avenue X and East 14th St at Bassett Caterers in Sheepshead Bay.

“It was very sad to see,” said neighbor Gregory Morales. “The whole place was just engulfed in smoke.”

It took 138 firefighters around four hours to get the flames under control.

Two firefighters were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries.

Karen Pane arrived at Bassett Caterers Saturday morning to pick up the hors d’oeuvres she ordered for her post-Christmas family gathering. Instead of her appetizers ready and waiting, she finds destruction. The remains of the blaze.

“That’s terrible, that’s terrible. They’ve been here for so long and very popular, very popular,” said Pane.

Howard Edwin paused while riding past the business on his bike to observe the scene.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a teenager,” he said. “It’s a good place, good people.”

Operating in the community since 1962, Russell D'Antonio has been with the business for 38 years, an owner since 1988.

He says this year has been tough. COVID-19 forced him to scale the business back, but he managed to keep all of his employees.

“I stretched myself in getting through COVID, now I got to get through this, it won’t be easy,” said D’Antonio.

He has faith Bassett Caterers will reopen, in part, because of the long standing community support.

“Not too sure yet, I’ve never been in a situation like this, I don’t know how to get through it. It’s a learning process for me,” D’Antonio said.

He hopes the reopening will see the business return to the same location, but in the meantime, his chief concern is his staff. Some have worked with him for more than a decade.

“I got 30 people here that don’t have jobs, it’s kind of hard for them. Christmas time, it’s a big busy season for us and they really worked hard this whole busy season,” he said. “None Of them have jobs now for at least three months, but they are still working hard.”

Some of the business’s employees learned of the fire only when they arrived for work Saturday morning.

The cause of the blaze remains under investigation by fire marshals.