(Updated 4 p.m.) One of Arlington’s most successful restaurants is coming to one of the county’s least successful restaurant locations.
Neapolitan pizzeria Pupatella, which was a popular food truck before opening its acclaimed bricks-and-mortar location in Bluemont in 2010, is opening a second Arlington location in the restaurant “Bermuda Triangle” at 1621 S. Walter Reed Drive. The opening is planned for this summer.
Two more restaurants are serving up dishes for diners in Ballston: pizza restaurant Turu’s by Timber Pizza Co. and Korean fast casual eatery Rice Crook.
Customers formed long lines at both joints today (Thursday) in the food hall of the newly redeveloped Ballston Quarter mall.
The outside of Goody’s is now sporting eye-watering lime green and red paint after county zoning regulations forced the pizzeria to cover its colorful, culinary mural.
Tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, cheese, slices of pizza, and gyros adorned the creme-colored walls along with an Italian flag after Goody’s commissioned the mural from a local artist.
USPS Decides to Relocate Rosslyn Post Office — “The U.S. Postal Service will relocate the Rosslyn Station Post Office, located at 1101 Wilson Blvd, to a yet-to-be-determined location as close as reasonably possible to the current site.” [USPS]
Netherlands Carillon to Go Quiet, Temporarily — “Bells that have been ringing high atop an Arlington hill for nearly 60 years will soon go temporarily silent as they embark on a journey thousands of miles long… The 50 bells will be taken down by crane and sent by ship to a foundry in the Netherlands, where they will be cleaned and retuned.” [WJLA]
A local pizza chain finally looks ready to open in a space just off Clarendon’s main drag, after more than two years of construction work.
Stone Hot Pizza initially applied for permits to move to the neighborhood in September 2016, but has made little progress since then. But county records show the restaurant won a commercial business permit on Feb. 1, and a glance inside the storefront at 3217 Washington Blvd shows that construction is ramping up.
Fire Works Pizza in Courthouse is temporarily closed due to a fire Saturday afternoon.
The fire broke out around 1:30 p.m. at the restaurant, near the corner of Clarendon Blvd and N. Adams Street, but the flames were mostly confined to the kitchen and the restaurant’s duct work and exhaust system, which extends to the roof.
Apartment Fire in Nauck — Firefighters extinguished a fire in an apartment Monday evening. The fire broke out around 5:15 p.m. on the 2100 block of S. Quincy Street, in the Nauck neighborhood. No injuries were reported. [Twitter]
Board Members Reluctant to Give Themselves a Raise — “Rather than seeking higher pay, current Arlington board members might take the opposite route – start scaling back their workload. ‘There is definitely a renewed emphasis on, ‘what is our role?” [County Board Chair Christian] Dorsey said at the Jan. 17 forum, responding to a questioner who suggested board members of recent years are more mired in the nuts-and-bolts of governance than their predecessors.” [InsideNova]
Lee Highway officially has a new pizzeria.
The Old Dominion Pizza Company opened its doors in the Lee Heights shopping center last Thursday (Jan. 3), owner John Rodas told ARLnow. The restaurant replaces Upper Crust Pizzeria, which shuttered in the space at 4514 Lee Highway back in July.
Longtime Rosslyn pizzeria Piola has now shut its doors.
The restaurant, located at 1550 Wilson Blvd, announced the move on its social media channels last Wednesday (Dec. 26). Piola had operated out of the space for the last 12 years.
Update, Friday at 8:30 a.m. — After this article was published, a county spokeswoman told ARLnow that zoning officials were “not aware of the mural at Goody’s.”
“A zoning enforcement inspector will be visiting the site to further investigate this matter,” spokeswoman Helen Duong wrote in an email.
Pizza Autentica in Ballston has shut down, after serving up slices for roughly eight years in the space.
Workers began emptying out the restaurant today (Wednesday) at its space in the ground floor of an office building at 850 N. Randolph Street.
Pupatella Raking in the Dough — “Budding Neapolitan pizza chain Pupatella has raised $3.75 million from several investors to open up to eight new company-owned pizza joints in the D.C. area.” [Washington Business Journal]
Arlington Ranks as Top Bike City — “Arlington ranked 17th, up from 25th two years ago. [Bicycling] magazine states Arlington could have made a higher jump in the rankings, but Metro funding issues left less for biking improvements and limited improvements.” [Patch]
