Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream, once named one of the best new restaurants in America, and one of the Tribune’s best pizzerias around Chicago, will close Dec. 30.
The restaurant announced the closure on social media:
“Thank you for all of your love and support over the past few years! Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream had been a fun incubator project and social food experiment during the pandemic. We’ve loved serving you! We have decided to end PFCIC at the end of this year to make space for Community of the Future’s next endeavor.”
The post said Sicilian slices will be sold Fridays through the end of the month, while the tavern-style thin crust it focused on for the past few years will be available the rest of the time.
“We are incredibly sad to be leaving Bridgeport but are excited to see what Ed (Marszewski) has planned for the PFCIC space in the Community of the Future,” said the Eat Free Pizza partners, spouses Billy and Cecily Federighi, and Bradley Shorten, in a statement. “We are very grateful for the opportunity given to us by the Marszewski brothers and to Chef Won Kim. We’ve learned so much in our time spent there and hope to use that knowledge to start our next venture.”
Co-founder Ed Marszewski and the partners behind Eat Free Pizza opened PFCIC in Bridgeport in 2020. Marszewski has long promoted the neighborhood on the South Side of the city as the “community of the future.” His mother, Korean American immigrant Maria Marszewski, founded the iconic Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar, located next door to the pizzeria.
They do indeed offer pizza, initially opening with Sicilian-inspired thick crust slices, then primarily focusing on Chicago-style thin crust tavern pizza, along with fried chicken by Kimski and ice cream pops from Pretty Cool Ice Cream.
Kimski, the Korean-Polish restaurant founded by Maria’s sons, reflective of their cultures, is located on the other side of the family bar. It will host a series of pop-ups until March. Prior to Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream’s launch, its space was home to an early iteration of Pleasant House Pub, which made the move to its current digs in Pilsen in 2016.
Kim’s Uncle Pizza opened in July and made the Tribune’s list of 25 best new restaurants.
In a statement via email, Ed Marszewski wrote:
“We love making Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream a platform for our favorite three food groups. It’s been a fun experiment and we were thrilled to bring something like this to the neighborhood.
“But the model we developed for the business at PFCIC wasn’t sustainable,” he continued. “We decided it was time to move on to other projects and opportunities. Incubating this business was a great experiment. It led me to help bring the (Eat Free) Pizza team to a new location to help keep our pizza dreams alive. I am pleased that the recent opening of Kim’s Uncle Pizza ensures that the pies we all love will still be available.”
PFCIC’s closure comes as a surprise, because pizza seemed to be the pandemic pivot of choice. Even Michelin-starred chef Noah Sandoval of Oriole opened Pizza Friendly Pizza with a walk-up window.
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Marszewski added, “It’s been a challenge to cover all the expenses and recoup investment these past few years.”
He co-owns Kim’s Uncle Pizza in the western suburb of Westmont with the Eat Free Pizza partners.
They met when the pre-pandemic pop-up was still refining its recipes.
“When Billy, Cecily and I were working out of my apartment, giving away pizzas for 2 ½ years,” Shorten said, “Ed came in and it freaked him out. He’s like, ‘What is this? I want to do something with you guys.’”
Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream, 964 W. 31st St., 773-565-4192, pfcic.com
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