Popular Manorhaven take-out shop Serra Provisions, whose pizza was named some of the best in Long Island, shut down its pizza oven this April after prolonged permit issues with the village.

The announcement was met with customers upset and critical of the Village of Manorhaven, which Mayor John Popeleski took issue with at a Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday.  He said the decision to close the pizza oven was not one made by the village as it had provided opportunities for the business to remedy its situation.

“We just want to raise our family, run our business, and put out the best product that we can,” the owners wrote in a Facebook post.

Serra Provisions opened on 7 Sintsink Drive East in Manorhaven in November 2021. About six months later, the business installed a pizza oven to expand its menu.

Owner Jesse Olson said the decision to start selling pizza was made to cater to its growing customer base and offer food options that were better for dinner meals. He said pizza was the best option to limit the amount of construction that would be needed.

Popeleski said the business went in front of the Board of Trustees as a hardship case to get its approval to begin operations and bypass approvals of the village’s Architectural Review Board and Planning Board.

Olson had presented his business application earlier to the village’s Board of Zoning and Appeals and followed all the required procedures. He said he was approved by the board.

He was ultimately granted final approvals by the village since it was found that their plans did not have elements needing to be approved by the other two boards, but Popeleski said it was a procedure the village had never done before.

“The village has been very lenient with Serra Provisions,” Popeleski said. “We’re trying to work with them.”

In the transcript provided by the village of Olsen’s appearance before the Board of Trustees, he said that no kitchen would be installed and that it would operate as a grab-and-go.

“So basically, right off the bat, they lied to this board,” Popeleski said.

Olson said he had emailed the mayor in September 2022 when he realized they had not received village approval for the pizza oven install. He said no response was received.

Popeleski said he is responsive to inquiries from the community, but Olson said multiple emails to the mayor were never responded to.

Popeleski also read a transcript from when Olsen appeared in village court in March 2023 at a proceeding where the judge said the business’ wood-fired pizza oven and its chimney were installed without a building permit.

While the owners admitted they had installed the pizza oven without village approval, they did seek approval from the Nassau County Fire Marshal, which determined there were no fire hazards. They said the failure to go through the village for approval was an oversight.

Popeleski said at the root of this issue is safety, saying that bypassing the required permits poses a risk to the public without proper oversight.

Olson said issues have persisted throughout the process of opening his business, which included never receiving a certificate of occupancy. He said this was exacerbated by turnover in the village’s Building Department.

He said his business also received numerous citations for variances his business had been approved for but none concerned the oven.

In a Facebook post on Serra Provisions’ account, the owners denied Manorhaven’s  claim that they were refusing to comply with the village.

With a desire to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, Olson said the best solution they found was to decommission the pizza oven entirely.

“Unfortunately, the baseless citations and lack of clear direction have us questioning the integrity of the current administration, which was not something we anticipated when starting our small business,” the owners wrote on Facebook. “Until there is a shift in local leadership, we do not envision that any further proceedings will be fair and objective, nor do we have the financial capacity to jump through any more hoops.”