Wood-oven pizza kitchen Via has become the latest restaurant casualty on the southwest corner of Greenfield and Warner in Gilbert.
The building had been home to a short-lived Tutti Santi location before Via took over in January.
But this dark cloud has a silver lining: A new tenant already is moving in, and it’s a good one. Pizza a Metro, a favorite in west Phoenix, expects to open this weekend.
Owner/chef Maurizio Benforte introduced his Italian cuisine to westside diners in 2007, drawing rave reviews despite a run-down Phoenix strip-mall location.
He says his Gilbert restaurant will have mostly the same menu, with a few exceptions, as the original. It also will do only 16-inch pizzas (and not the meter-long pies that gave the restaurant its name).
Benforte, who cleaned up the space last week, says he may be able to open as soon as Thursday.
Beneforte is the same guy who owned amarone in that spot originally. Same owners for all restaurants in that location…go look up the corp commission papers. 4 names…same owners…lame marketing. And the last partial owner was doing good but read your other local papers about what happened. Crooked.