Pizzeria

A businessman who wants to open a pizzeria at 1506 Chester Pike has asked the Folcroft Zoning Hearing Board for a special exception. Although the area is zoned for commercial use, Gus Kontis of Wilmington needs a special exception to operate an eat-in/take-out restaurant because the site is not zoned for sit-down dining. He and his partner, Jerry Fokas, plan to open a pizza shop in the 1,100- square-foot building, and to provide seating for 32. Kontis testified at Monday night's hearing that he would sign a lease on the property if the special exception was granted.

To get the world to beat a path to your door, you need not build a better mousetrap. Just sell everything on your menu at half price. That's what New Village Pizza in Bensalem did all day Monday. About 2,100 people - an estimated five times more than on a normal day - showed up to claim their share of the discount. The sale, which was only advertised through fliers that were not widely distributed, marked the reopening of New Village after a 10-day shutdown as new owners took over.

The Central Morton Civic Association (CMCA) is leading a boycott against a Morton pizzeria whose owner allegedly kissed a 17-year-old girl against her will. The boycott has been in effect four weeks, since the alleged incident, said CMCA president Eleanor Saunders. "We are showing community disapproval for the events at the pizza place," she said. "We are a close-knit town; when something happens to one of us, we all feel it. " The mother of the girl gave this account of the incident: The girl, who patronized Santino's Pizza Rama about once a week, went in Aug. 10 to buy some french fries.

A firefighter was injured Wednesday morning as he battled a blaze at a landmark South Street pizzeria. The fire at Lorenzo and Son's Pizza, at 3rd and South Street, was first reported at 10:26 a.m. Firefighters placed it under control shortly before noon. The three-story building at 305 South St. houses the pizzeria on the ground floor and several apartments above, said Executive Fire Chief Richard Davison. A hole in the wall that does brisk business after last call, Lorenzo's is known for brusque counter workers and New York-style pizza slices the size of your head.

Four employees of a Little Caesar's pizzeria were charged with theft and receiving stolen property, police said, after they stole $363 in cash from the pizzeria and tried covering up the crime by reporting that they had been robbed. Three of those charged were brothers who live in Penns Grove, N.J.: Jose Andujar, 18; Daniel, 21; and their 17-year-old brother, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile. The fourth person charged was Angie Robayo, 18, of the 6300 block of Elmhurst Street, Philadelphia.

If you order a pie at Joe's Pizza in Medford, you can get it with black olives, pepperoni, anchovies or green peppers, among other toppings. Until recently, according to Newark FBI agents, you could also pick up cocaine and handguns. To go. Pizza parlor owner Giuseppe Mannino, 33, of Somerdale, is scheduled for a bail hearing tomorrow before a U.S. magistrate in Trenton. He was arrested Monday afternoon by FBI agents at the pizzeria, which is on Tomlinson Mill Road, in front of five startled customers and three employees.

A 13-year-old boy using a cell phone foiled a holdup at a Mount Airy pizza shop that led to a wild shoot-out last night between cops and a robbery suspect. When the smoke cleared, the suspect and an employee of the pizzeria, on Stenton Avenue near Barringer Street, each suffered three gunshot wounds, police said. Both were taken to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where the suspect was listed in critical condition and the pizzeria employee in guarded condition, police said.

Francesco "Cheech" Gambino, a reputed boss of the Sicilian Mafia, was convicted yesterday by a federal jury of trafficking in millions of dollars worth of heroin and cocaine, using pizzerias as fronts. The jury also convicted four other reputed Sicilian Mafia members or associates, but acquitted another defendant, Carlo Fodera, owner of an auto body shop in Brooklyn, N.Y. "It's an important victory in the war against drugs, given the international aspects of the organization," said Michael Seigel, a prosecutor with the U.S. Organized Crime Strike Force in Philadelphia.

Nabil Jomli has had a varied professional life. He trained as an engineer in his native Tunisia, yet became a physical education teacher there. Then, after two years as a front desk clerk in a London hotel, he came to Philadelphia in 1997. The next year he opened a halal butcher shop in the Italian Market. The butcher shop evolved into a Mediterranean take-out restaurant and, most recently, into a pizzeria with a sprinkling of Mediterranean dishes on the menu. However, one thing has been constant since Jomli, 33, opened his first business on 9th Street: savory, slightly spicy merguez sausage.

A Philadelphia maintenance man whose attorney said he had sold cocaine to make extra money for his wife and daughter was sentenced in Woodbury yesterday to nine years in prison. Luis Lenis, 30, pale and thin, did not comment as he was sentenced, slightly more than one month after he pleaded guilty to selling more than five ounces of cocaine to the owner of a pizza shop that authorities said was the hub of an international narcotics network. Lenis, a native of Colombia, was one of about 30 defendants indicted last year after a two-year wiretap investigation into Gambino's Plaza 47 Pizza & Sub Shop in Deptford.

The stretch of South Street from Broad Street west into Grays Ferry has been growing as a food destination, what with such recent arrivals as the Cambridge , Magpie Artisan Pie Boutique , Sawatdee , and the Quick Fixx , and with the second location of Honey's Sit 'n Eat opening shortly at 21st and South Streets. Saturday will see the debut of Miles Table at 1620 South St. (267-318-7337), a cozy, neighborhood-friendly spot from Michael Lynch, whose business Catering by Miles counts for much of the reason people want to join Lombard Swim Club, where he's the exclusive caterer.

A Neapolitan pizzeria and a French bistro have joined Phoenixville's dining lineup. At Vecchia Pizzeria Napoletana (249 Bridge St., 610-933-1355), townsman Frank Nattle imports everything from Naples - the 00 flour, the San Marzano tomatoes, the bufala mozzarella, even the two stonemasons who built his oven from Mount Vesuvius stone. While working at the now-closed Brick Oven Bread & Cheese Shop down the street, Nattle experimented with pizza-baking after hours in the still-warm oven.

A firefighter was injured Wednesday morning as he battled a blaze at a landmark South Street pizzeria. The fire at Lorenzo and Son's Pizza, at 3rd and South Street, was first reported at 10:26 a.m. Firefighters placed it under control shortly before noon. The three-story building at 305 South St. houses the pizzeria on the ground floor and several apartments above, said Executive Fire Chief Richard Davison. A hole in the wall that does brisk business after last call, Lorenzo's is known for brusque counter workers and New York-style pizza slices the size of your head.

Wood-fired oven by wood-fired oven, the city's pizza scene is heating up. When American-raised Antimo DiMeo, 20, expressed interest in following his Neapolitan-born father, Pino, 43, in the pizza business, the son insisted he wanted to cook in the old-country way, with a wood-fired oven. (Pino's parlors use conventional gas ovens.) Then the father and son said they performed a taste test at their parlor in downtown Wilmington: They made batches of dough with Wilmington tap water and with bottled water from Naples.

PHILADELPHIA Kelly Drive crash kills 2 Two people were killed and a third was was seriously injured after a crash on Kelly Drive in Fairmount Park yesterday afternoon, police said. A 34-year-old woman driving a silver Volkswagen northbound along Kelly Drive crossed the center line about 3 p.m. and ran head-on into a green Toyota Sienna being driven by a 49-year-old woman, police said. A passenger in the Volkswagen was pronounced dead at the scene at 3:05 p.m., and the driver was pronounced dead at 3:25 p.m., said Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman.

If you didn't know better, you might think that "Mack & Manco" is how they say "pizza" in Ocean City. After all, for more than 50 years along the town's famed boardwalk, the name has been synonymous with what is arguably America's favorite fast food. You need look no further than the three - count 'em, three - Mack & Mancos on a mere four-block stretch in the heart of the wooden esplanade - a feat of market saturation that would make even Starbucks executives gnash their teeth in envy.

After Antonino "Joe" Lombardo, owner of Lisa's Pizza in Telford, was beaten to death in February 2009, the identity of the killer remained a mystery. The death of the 60-year-old businessman horrified neighbors in the small Montgomery County borough, which had reported only two murders in its history. On Wednesday, authorities announced that they had identified the assailant and traced him to Guatemala with the help of electronic surveillance. Juan A. Pais, an illegal immigrant from that country who had worked at a nearby pizza shop at the time of the attack, fled the United States after the slaying but plunged to his death at a construction site in Guatemala on Nov. 23 before police could arrest him, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.

Nickolas Galiatsatos, a pizza shop guy in Upper Darby, had a simple plan, according to police. He allegedly tried to infest competing pizzerias with mice. The plan, however, quickly unraveled when Galiatsatos, 47, owner of Nina's Bella Pizzeria, tried to slip a bag of mice past two uniformed police officers eating lunch at Verona Pizza around 3 p.m. Monday, authorities said. "He asked to used the bathroom," said Fanis Facas, 24, co-owner of Verona at 8917 West Chester Pike, adding he had not known that Galiatsatos owned another pizza joint at 8445 West Chester Pike.

On an ordinary day, the sleepy little pizza shop that sits beneath a bright blue awning on Lincoln Avenue in Prospect Park sends out, maybe, 150 orders. But this, as Dave Shearn will tell you, was no ordinary time for Cornerstone Pizza, the small business he runs with James "Buzz" Villas, his partner from Mantua, Gloucester County. Enter the US Airways employee, the friend of a customer, who phoned at 1 p.m. Tuesday, to say: "How fast can you get 50 pizzas down here? And I need another 100 by 6:30.