Ocean Beach will soon gain a new family-friendly pizza spot, led by a rather family-oriented team of business owners; Joe Galascione, along with his two cousins, plans to open Wild Things at 2163 Abbott St. this coming March.
“This has been a family dream of ours for 20 years,” Galascione told What Now San Diego. “This won’t be another O.B. bar. We’ll be open to all ages, and it will be very kid-friendly.”
While this will be Joe’s first restaurant venture, his cousins Gabriel and Samuel Gonzales have years of restaurant management experience under their belts. Their love of cooking, however, runs in the family.
“We all love to eat, we all love to cook, and we even do family Zoom calls and everyone’s cooking a different meal,” Galascione said. “And we’re all Italians, so the pizza just made sense.”
When asked about the inspiration behind the name Wild Things, Galascione credited the children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are.”
“I have two sons that love the book, and my cousins all grew up reading the book,” Galascione said. “We’re going to have a big Instagram ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ mural on the side of the building, with little monsters throughout the menu.”
The menu will offer pizza, beer and wine in the evenings. In the mornings, Wild Things will sell Ryan Bros. Coffee. Yet another family-like connection, Galascione went to college with the Ryan brothers themselves.
The long-time local family will soon fill the empty space left by Surf Rider Pizza, a restaurant once owned by Gina Champion-Cain of San Diego infamy. In July, Champion-Cain pled guilty to a $400 million Ponzi scheme, as reported by NBC San Diego.
The recent change of occupancy at 2163 Abbott St. was managed by Paul Ahern and Nate Benedetto of Next Wave Commercial, as well as Serena Patterson of Urban Property Group in San Diego.
