Isabella's Oven, the Lower East Side pizza place deemed one of the top ten in NYC by big eatin' Ed Levine, was abruptly closed at the end of January for, rumor has it, not paying $70K in back rent. Co-owner Teresa Rizzo-Marino told Grub Street she fell behind because she spent $300,000 renovating and rat-proofing the pizzeria, and she had hoped the Seward Park Co-Op board, which controls the property, would give her more time: "I was subjected to mental abuse. They told me to sign over the whole store and [that] they'd forget about what I owed if I gave them the pizza recipe." Now it seems Rizzo-Marino, who is rumored to be the daughter of one board member, inflicted some abuse of her own on the way out the door, taking a sledgehammer and spray paint to the place. Photos on Eater and Grub Street depict a level of destruction which one commenter aptly deemed "poetry." The interior has been savagely trashed, and "threatening and derogatory graffiti" spray painted all over the walls. BURN! You just gonna take that, Co-Op board?
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