La Pizza Cucina, 110 Columbia Northeast Drive: 2007 2 comments
Columbia Northeast Drive is the official name of the easternmost little access road from Two Notch back into the Big Lots / Dunkin' Donuts plaza on Two Notch Road just west of Spring Valley. Both the main plaza and this little side strip-mall have been down at the heels for years though they have generally avoided vacancies. Aside from having the only Peurto Rican restaurant in Columbia (that I know of anyway), the strip also has the only Indian Restaurant in the Northeast.
La Pizza Cucina was, I think in the storefront now occupied by San Juan (which itself used to be at the bottom of the strip parallel to Two Notch at one time). A, personal web calendar (apparently not updated since 2004) describes La Pizza Cucina thus:
La Pizza Cucina
Serving gourmet pizza pies and over 100 beers and wines to choose from, this quaint little pizza parlor offers you the infectious hospitality of a "Cheers" styled pub. Come eat here once, and you're a friend for life. "There's edible and there's Incredible" - La Pizza Cucina.
I suspect the restaurant supplied the text to the performers as I think it is pretty close to how they used to advertise. I'm saying the place closed in 2007 because it is not in the 2008 phonebook but it was still in a newspaper restaurant listing (which are notoriously slow to fix closures) in February of 2008.
I had only two problems with La Pizza Cucina:
1) I expected "gourmet" pizza to be, you know, good, and instead found it pretty mediocre.
2) The staff, at least on shift the one time I went, was rude. In particular, there was a table of teenage boys -- being teenage boys. They weren't thugs, they weren't trying to create a disturbance, they were just having a good time. One of them rocked his chair onto the back legs, and the manager came down on him like a ton of bricks. I thought it was totally inappropriate. No, it's not good for the chairs, but your restaurant chair is not going to be handed down to your grandkids. If something absolutely had to be said, it could have been said politely.
Anyway, I never went back.
2 Responses to 'La Pizza Cucina, 110 Columbia Northeast Drive: 2007'
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Fernando
24 Apr 10 at 6:24 am
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I don't know if you've covered this and I haven't seen it yet, but there is another restaurant in this strip mall that's been through some changes. Directly behind Dunkin Donuts is Taps Pub which is in the location of the old WG's Wings and, I think, Leo's Chicken Wings from the late 80's. Taps originally occupied two of the units but some time in 2009 acquired the 3rd spot closest to the daycare and turned that into a pool room. House Beautiful was there but moved.
Natalie
27 Sep 10 at 12:19 am
There is another Puerto Rican restaurant at 1701 Percival Road, between Decker and I-77.
http://www.mirinconcitocriollo.com/
Its actually pretty good, but don't go there for dinner in a hurry!