One of the pillars of Brooklyn’s Italian food scene is closing after 14 years in business.
Park Slope restaurant Franny’s will serve its last dish — a clam pie, if that last party knows what to get — on Aug. 20. When it opened in 2004, the restaurant pioneered farm-to-table dining before it became the expected way restaurants sourced and prepared their food, and has remained a popular destination for not just pizza but its inventive, Italy-by-way-of-New York dishes.
Owners Francine Stephens and Andrew Feinberg announced the closing on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “You have filled our restaurant with so much joy, and inspired our team to work hard and with care and passion every single day,” they wrote. “Thank you to our beloved Brooklyn community so very much for sharing in our amazing journey.”
They didn’t give a reason for the closing, though they did say that Franny’s “will continue in some way in the future, and we will be sure to keep you posted of news of our next chapter.”
The restaurant had just expanded in 2013 to a larger location down Flatbush Avenue from where it originally opened. Restaurateur Joe Campanale, who the owners call a “longtime friend and fan” of the restaurant, is taking over the space, so there’s reason for cautious optimism about what’s to come.
Franny’s joins a line of recent closings of NYC restaurants that have defined the city’s dining scene in the past two decades. Schiller’s Liquor Bar, the Keith McNally restaurant that turned the Lower East Side into a hub of cool restaurants and bars, is also closing in August, while Angelica Kitchen closed in April after 40 years of serving vegan food to the punk rockers of St. Marks.
