Ghazi Partners to Open New Restaurant
by June 14, 1999 12:00 am 99 views
Steve Glenn and Ghazi Issa plan to open a steak, seafood and vegetarian restaurant by August in the Fayetteville building that housed the original Ghazi’s Pesto Cafe at 1150 N. College Ave.
Glenn, a carnivore, says he got the idea because dining with his wife, a vegetarian, can be a frustrating experience. It seems that most area restaurants are either vegetarian or cater only to meat-eaters.
“There’s no use for the men to have to suffer and have to go to vegetarian places, and vice versa,” jokes Glenn, adding, “I know there are also vegetarian men.”
Glenn says the restaurant will have two grills – one for meat, the other for vegetables. The eatery will serve U.S. prime beef, he adds.
Glenn says he’s yet to come up with a name and logo for the new restaurant.
Ghazi’s Pesto Cafe has moved back and forth among three different locations since the restaurant opened in 1997, but somehow the clientele has tracked down the popular Italian restaurant each time.
Issa (operating separately from Glenn) opened a second Ghazi’s Pesto Cafe in May 1998 at 3075 Market Ave. but closed it two months later after a dispute with the landlord.
Glenn and Issa closed their original restaurant at 1150 N. College Ave. (in front of the Hi-Way Inn Motel) last September when they moved the business to a building at 1830 N. College Ave. (previously the site of Tony’s Cafe and Cable Car Pizza before that).
The new restaurant – with 18 tables and 85 seats – did so well that the partners decided to reopen at the original site last November as a second Ghazi’s Pesto Cafe and serve customers from the same menu at both locations.
But the partners closed the original Ghazi’s Pesto Cafe again in March.
“We were basically competing with ourselves,” Glenn says, “which was shooting ourselves in the foot in a way.”
Glenn says it makes more sense to open a different type of restaurant in the vacant building.
“We’re still paying the rent on that building,” he says. “We like the building” and might as well do something with it.