Talk about trimming the fat.
The owner of popular Slope brunch spot Dizzy’s is shuttering the diner’s Fifth Avenue location so he can pump money into it’s like-named elder sister on Ninth Street.
“Yeah Fifth Avenue is closing, but who cares, because Ninth Street is going to blow you away,” said proprietor Matheo Pisciotta.
The diner on Fifth Avenue between President and Carroll Streets will close Sunday, after just five years in the neighborhood. It quickly became a beloved brunch destination following its 2012 opening, a reputation Pisciotta will honor on its last day in business by treating patrons to bottomless free mimosas and Prosecco in a final grand hurrah.
The restaurateur had high hopes for the location, which he thought would be the first of many offshoots across the borough, but stiff regulations and costly health department inspections limited its profitability, he said.
“I can go on a rant about how difficult it is to run a small business in this town,” Pisciotta said. “The city does not make it easy.”
But the owner also worried that the Fifth Avenue outpost was siphoning business from Dizzy’s Ninth Street flagship, which opened in 1997 between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West and benefits from a healthy commuter clientele that uses the nearby Seventh Avenue subway station.
“On Ninth Street, the F train is right at our front door,” he said. “We’ll do 10 times as much business in bagels, coffee, Danish pastries, and egg sandwiches than we do here.”
Pisciotta will take the money he’s saving by closing shop on Fifth Avenue and invest it into the Ninth Street location, refurbishing the restaurant and stocking its pantry with all the freshest holistic, locally sourced ingredients that the nabe’s increasingly bougie patrons demand.
“The quality of products, service, and aesthetics will go up 10 notches,” he said. “People will get farm-raised, grass-fed, antibiotic-free burgers, and chickens from the lady’s back yard down the street.”
