
OK, this is going to get a little confusing, so stay with me.
There’s a new business occupying the space in downtown Orlando that most recently was the food hall Market On Magnolia and before that Frank ’n Steins, which opened in 2011. Taking a cue from its location at the intersection of Magnolia Avenue and Church Street, the new place is called The Corner Pizza Bar. It is owned by Diana and Alejandro Ranalli, who also own a restaurant called Italian House on Crystal Lake Drive just north of Curry Ford Road in a former Pizza Hut hut.
The Ranallis bought Italian House in 2019 after selling Ragazzi’s on Edgewater Drive in College Park. What’s confusing to me – and I’ll admit to facile befuddlement these days – is that the website for the Italian House states that it has been “serving Orlando since 1989.”
But in May of 2001, I reviewed a restaurant with the same address as Italian House called Cherazi’s. It may still have been a Pizza Hut before Cherazi’s because I mentioned in the review that I had once walked in while it was a PH and found it so unkempt and unclean-looking that I turned around and left. And in between Cherazi’s and Italian House, the restaurant was known as Italian Pie and Pasta House.
(Property records, by the way, would suggest the hut was constructed in 1971.)
So what does all this mean? I was hoping you could tell me. At the very least, you can take the “serving since...” with a grain of salt, or in this case sale.
But I left you waiting on the corner, so let’s go back there.