These Williamsburgers don’t want this restaurant — no butts about it!
A local panel rejected a notorious bar owners’ application for a new Italian eatery on N. First Street on May 24, after a mob of angry residents argued it would end up being another party venue like the nightlife impresario’s other establishments — which, among other things, sport sleazy sinks in the shape of ladies’ rear ends — and a bad fit for the residential area.
“I find it distasteful and I think many of the woman in the community do as well,” said Jenice Malecki, who lives across the street from the location between Kent and Wythe avenues and has been fighting the prospective venue for years. “For men to wash their hands, they’re essentially feeling a women’s derriere.”
Members of Community Board 1’s liquor license committee voted unanimously to reject Alexander Dimitrov’s application to serve booze at his planned Mediterranean restaurant Pasta Wiz — and it isn’t the first time.
In 2012, the board rejected Dimitrov’s pitch to build a massive party venue in the same location — and then again when he revised the proposal as an Italian eatery — following neighbors’ fears it would end up like his wild Manhattan club Mehanata, where male patrons wash their hands in the offending butt basins, and pee into urinals in the shape of a woman’s gaping mouth.
The State Liquor Authority subsequently shot down that application, too, telling him he first needed to crack down on rowdy revelers at Mehanata — which features a bar made out of ice where patrons are encouraged to dress in old Soviet military uniforms and chug vodka, according to its website.
Dimitrov also owns a bar called Fishtales in Queens with the same washb-ass-ins, critics said.
Locals and Dimitrov clashed again in 2013, after he rented the building out as a practice space for rock bands without the right permits, according to a DNA Info report at the time.
But Dimitrov defended his new venture to the committee, saying Pasta Whiz would be a respectable noodle bar, not another party palace with risqué bathroom fittings, and claimed his neighbors have been lying to keep him out.
“You know you are lying about most of this stuff and you make all these complaints for no reason,” he said. “This is going to be a pasta place, not a nightclub.”
He also accused his critics of beating up a worker he had sent out to collect signatures in support of his venture, which he presented to the committee.
But the committee was not convinced of his plans — in addition to the neighbors’ objections, members said his application was too vague about the eatery’s layout and kitchen.
“There is no real floor plan, no real kitchen plan, there is no chef, and a lack of neighborhood support,” said committee co-chair Tom Burrows.
The full community board will vote on the application next, though its recommendation — like the committee’s — is only advisory. The State Liquor Authority ultimately decides who does and doesn’t get to serve booze.
