Midtown Lunch

For all of you who were as sad as I was when the roller coaster ride of It’s A Pizza on John St. (btw. Broadway & Nassau) ended with a closure, you may be interested to know it’s being replaced. The windows had been papered up for a while and last night a banner was up announcing Aroy Dee Thai Kitchen’s arrival. It looks like some work is still being done to the inside, but hopefully we’ll get our hands on some of their food soon.

The weird rollercoaster ride that It’s A Pizza on John St. (btw. Broadway & Nassau) was on seems to finally be over, as the place has been closed for a week, the inside has been gutted and there’s a marshal’s order of eviction on the window. I waited to post anything because the place has closed down at least two other times, once in January for failing a Department of Health inspection and then in May for operating without a permit. I know a lot of you loved their pizza (and I loved their pasta), but the constant construction on that stretch of the street for the past couple of years likely did them no favors. As one Lunch’er who wrote in to alert me to the closure noted, it’s best to just head down the street to Cafe 41 for a $1 slice to soothe your sadness.

It feels like every week we’re reporting on It’s A Pizza being closed for one reason or other lately. The cheap yet delicious pizza and pasta place on John St. (btw. Broadway & Nassau) was closed on Friday for operating without a permit, and this is after a shuttering by the Department of Health back in January for health code violations. Let’s hope they’re able to bounce back from this closure to continue serving us 99 cent slices for dinner.

Something seemed like it was missing while walking down John St. between Broadway & Nassau yesterday, and it turned out to be the collection of signs outside of It’s A Pizza. The dreaded yellow “closed by the Department of Health” sticker was affixed to the door, much to the dismay of a couple of guys standing outside who apparently needed pizza badly and did not know where to turn. This place had one of my favorite slices, not to mention some really good and cheap pasta so let’s hope this is not permanent. I think we’re all still smarting from the DOH shuttering of the FiDi’s only Popeye’s location. Update: They’re back open, and have added Sicilian slices to the late afternoon 99 cent slice special.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing an independent eatery that I was afraid wouldn’t make it thrive. That’s the case with It’s a Pizza – the sort of weird Italian place also serving Uzbek food that I first wrote about last summer. I hadn’t made it back to try anything other than pizza on the menu so I decided to rectify that situation and took a co-lunch’er along to see how they were doing. When I was there last they hadn’t been open long and were mostly focused on pizza and pasta with some other random things thrown in, including crepes. What I tried was good, but I was worried that with all of the Fulton St. Transit Center construction nearby they might not be seeing enough customers to survive. When I walked in the other day I could see that was definitely not the case.  Read more »

There are a lot of places serving slices in the Financial District, and I’m always on the hunt for my favorite. I think I may have found a new front runner with It’s A Pizza on John St. (btw. Broadway & Nassau) – a place that caught my attention with its sign that makes it look like a chain even though, to my knowledge, it’s not.

They have a very busy front window that displays a number of signs for what they sell including pizza (99 cent slices from 3-5 p.m.!), pastas, a chicken over rice special and sandwiches. Things only got more awesome when I got inside and noticed they had some very un-Italian specialties listed including something called a samsa and some dumpling-looking things called hinkali. Part of me wanted to order all of these crazy things, but since it was my first time visiting I thought I should actually eat some pizza since it’s the place’s namesake. Read more »