Doppio Closes Amid Lease Dispute

By Chris Mellides

cmellides@longislandergroup.com

Doppio Artisan Bistro has closed after more than two years on Clinton Avenue.

After a long-simmering disagreement between the restaurant’s operators and its landlord boiled over this weekend, Doppio Artisan Bistro’s Huntington location closed its doors Sunday.

 Doppio’s business partners Tom Pescuma and brothers Louis and Joseph Barresi described their business relationship with landlord Louis Block in a written statement as “soured” and one that made operating their restaurant at the location “no longer viable.”

 Modeled after the success of the original Doppio Bistro, which launched in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2011, owners of the former Clinton Avenue restaurant set up shop in Huntington in April 2013.

 Block said the Doppio ownership simply defaulted in its lease and that he had given Pescuma and his partners several opportunities to make good on their payments.

 “He’s been given numerous opportunities to try to make good on the lease and he didn’t,” said Block. “He’s broken numerous parts of the lease agreement, and he’s never lived up to any of his promises.”

 Now, with the restaurant’s recent shuttering, Pescuma says that he and the other Doppio owners are exploring other options in Huntington, including a possible location on New Street.