Core De Roma Closes On South Street

So as we were poking around doing other things today, one of our interns turned up this sad news: Core de Roma’s South Street location went dark last week after almost ten years in the neighborhood.

I immediately got on the phone and called owner Luigi Pinti and asked him what happened. And the first thing out of his mouth?

“South Street has changed. South Street has changed dramatically.”

And that’s true, but Pinti certainly wasn’t talking about things changing in a good way. “It’s hard to do business on South Street,” he said. “It’s hard to do business in Philadelphia.” He mentioned rising rents, parking problems, the everyday expenses of doing business. “I’ve been losing money the past couple years,” he explained, “and I wanted to stop losing money.”

Oh, and also? There was that shooting.

Pinti explained that a few months ago, there was a shooting right next door to his place.

“That scared me, you know?” And after that, he just didn’t feel like South Street was very welcoming to people any more. It took him a little while, but last week, he turned out the lights at Philly’s Core de Roma for the last time.

The good news? He already had a second Core de Roma up and running in West Chester. And thing there are going “very, very, very, very, very well,” according to Pinti.

“I feel bad for South Street,” he said, “but if I didn’t have the other restaurant? I don’t know what I would do.”

Core de Roma [official]