Gio’s Chicken Siciliana has permanently closed its location in The Battery Atlanta, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution (AJC) Monday first reported. Owner Giovanni Di Palma did not immediately respond to a request for comment by What Now Atlanta.
With the shutter of the 3,000-square-foot restaurant—which was housed adjacent sister Antico Pizza in space previously occupied by Feed Fried Chicken + Such—Gio’s is now only operating its original Home Park outpost of the Italian-style chicken joint.
“Gio’s was designed as a midseason pop-up, year to year testing the brand,” Di Palma told the AJC. “With the uncertainty and delay of baseball as well as COVID indoor dining restrictions, it doesn’t make sense to reopen at this time. Antico has been [a] huge success during COVID. We love the Braves and the Battery and our relationship is [as] strong as ever.”
Nearby the owners of C. Ellet’s are using the downtime to give the restaurant a makeover.
Gio’s joins a growing list of Atlanta-area eateries to permanently close citing the novel coronavirus as the main deciding factor for doing so. Yelp reports than 53 percent of the restaurant listed on its platform that temporarily shuttered in early March as of mid-June had been marked as “permanently closed.”
