(March 20, 2015) The only change Mione’s Pizza and Italian Restaurant owners are comfortable with is location.
The venerable West Ocean City pizzeria, in the Tanger Outlets, started in Brooklyn, spent some time in Whitehall, Pa. and landed in Ocean City in 1998. Now, in the first change since then, the family has decided to dip their toe into the ocean.
They plan to open a second restaurant in the 67th Street TownCenter where the Old English Fish, Chips and Chicken was formerly located.
“We didn’t really have plans to expand, but our customers kept saying we should be on the island,” owner Carl Mione said.
But that’s about as far as he’s willing to go.
“Everything is going to remain exactly the same,” Mione said, which means giant signs behind the counter listing the menu, a large display of different pizza slice options in front for customers to see, and a loud, infectious and jovial atmosphere between employees, many of whom have been with the eatery for a number of years.
Mione said his father, Antonino, 72, would still be making the pizza dough each morning.
“He came to America when he was 15, and had a bunch of jobs. The one he stuck with was pizza,” Mione said.
Mione’s parents opened a pizza shop in Brooklyn, and eventually moved it to a mall in Pennsylvania until the mall was demolished. Knowing they would have to abandon that business, Mione said they leveraged a relationship with the Cordish Company, a Baltimore-based property management company who turned them on to the Ocean City area.
The rest is history until this latest move.
“We didn’t find a place that spoke to us in Delaware or elsewhere in Ocean City, it just never happened for us, and then we found this place and everything seemed right,” Mione said.
“It’s all family oriented. My wife, Angie or I will be going back and forth between the stores. It’s the real deal,” he said.
The new shop is expected to open in early May.
