New pizza restaurant opens in Oakridge as another one closes

Carmine’s Pizzeria and Italian Café will soon be opening in the space formerly occupied by Lorenzo’s Pizza and Palliser Diner. The signage on the new pizza joint went up on Feb. 8th and the owners hope to be serving customers before the end of the month.

This location, in the strip mall at Palliser Drive and Oakfield Drive, will be Carmine’s second restaurant in Calgary. Their original location, on Northmount Drive in the community of Highwood in the city’s northwest, opened last June and ever since has received very positive reviews.

Carmine’s web site (www.carminespizza.ca) has yet to indicate that it will be opening a second location, but the restaurant’s Instagram site says the new location will seat 30 people.. The site boasts that Carmine’s produces “authentic New York style pizza in the heart of Calgary.”

Carmine’s is owned by Rob Greco, a local restauranteur whose previous venture was the long-since-closed Fine Diner. According to a Calgary Herald review of Carmine’s first location back in September, the pizzeria serves two sizes of pizzas – a 14-inch for two people ($25) and an 18-inch for four people ($31). Besides pizza, the restaurant also serves a variety of appetizers, pastas, salads, and ice cream. The north location is licenced and open seven days a week from 4 to 10 p.m.

Lorenzo’s Pizza and Palliser Diner closed rather suddenly in early January, in the location that has seen more than its share of failed restaurants over the last decade. Hopefully, Carmine’s will change that trend.

If it does, this innocuous strip mall in the heart of Oakridge will house two excellent restaurants for the community to enjoy, as it’s also the location of the critically acclaimed Purlieu, which opened nine months ago.