The Brooklyn pizza crust may be thin, but the drama is all deep dish.
The New York Post reports that the Department of Buildings has stopped the current owners of Grimaldi's Pizza from a move to a larger space down the street after officials found out they installed a coal-fired pizza oven without a proper permit.
Owner Frank Ciolli will have to leave the old oven in the current location -- which may become a new, competing pizza joint owned by Patsy Grimaldi, whose family originally owned the shop.
A bitter rent dispute between Ciolli, who bought Grimaldi's in 1998, prompted the move down the street on Old Fulton.
Ciolli told the Post that the stop-work order on his new oven will seriously jeopardize the reopening of the restaurant, which is scheduled for next week.
He blamed the mix-up on a controversial architect, Robert Scarano, who is banned from doing business in the city after falsifying zoning documents in previous years.
Ciolli claims he didn't know about Scarano's saucy past.
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Environmental concerns over coal ovens have made permits for new ones extremely rare. Ciolli's application was approved in October with a "pizza oven" -- but he didn't mention the all-important coal oven, which is difficult to get approved but integral to the pizza-making process.
