[Photo by Mary Jones via Google]
We have our third pizza place and awning combo in the past year or so at 35 First Ave. near East Second Street… where we went from Empire Pizza II to IL Gusto Italiano to, now, Farid's Middle Eastern Grill Food & Pizza…
Sadly, we could not locate our photo of IL Gusto Italiano for comparison. (And we do not know a thing about any of these places. Anyone?)
Also, we do not know if Farid's will be employing the awesome* flashing sign… let's go back to the summer of 2012 for some Empire Pizza II razzle signage dazzle…
[* not really awesome]
2 comments:
This place , under various names, has been a middle eastern pizza place for at least 25 years. At times they have also had an Italian hot plate buffet, and at other times it has had a middle eastern buffet. At one point they featured a chicken rotisserie. The one thing they all have had in common is that the pizza has always been terrible, and the hot dinners terrible to mediocre at best. In the past 10 years, with so many better options available around them, they haven't had much business apart from the odd cabbie, or late night drunk kids. The name and ownership keeps changing, but the formula remains the same, and nobody has figured out that the problem is the type of food they serve, and its terrible quality, and the awful atmosphere with the glaring fluorescent lights, the non-stop arabic television, the uncomfortable communal tables and the rest. Changing the signs yet again is not going to make this a successful business unless they change the basic concept and formula.
Despite the change of awnings, the pizza has always been pretty unappetizing. I live around the corner, but walk up to 8th street when I want a good slice.
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