California Pizza Kitchen’s Only Manhattan Location Will Close on Friday

Suburban mall favorite California Pizza Kitchen will stop serving its famed Barbecue Chicken pie in Midtown later this week. The 12-year-old branch will shut its doors on Friday, leaving zero outposts of the American pizza chain in Manhattan.

The lease is up for the big, highly visible corner space at 440 Park Avenue South, on East 30th Street, and the rising costs are forcing it to close, a spokesperson says. “Despite our strong performance here, rising rent costs have simply become too high to continue in this specific location,” he says.

The Beverly Hills-born restaurant usually found in suburban malls is known for fusiony pizza combinations like the famed BBQ Chicken pizza and Thai chicken pies and an equally varied non-pizza menu. Though CPK is a prolific chain, few outposts exist in the five boroughs. Once this one closes, one last NYC location will exist in Queens, inside the the Shops at Atlas Park in Glendale.

CPK began in 1985, touting California-style pizza like that barbecue sauce-drenched pie, which has been on the menu from the onset. It has expanded throughout the U.S. as well as globally, with locations in Hong Kong, India, and Mexico, among others.