Nothing can get between the Pizza Nazi and his oven. Rockaway Beach’s most notorious chef, Whitney Aycock, was arrested in December, DNAinfo reports, after performing a daring operation that involved cutting a hole in the wall of his former restaurant, Whit’s End, and absconding with its oven. The problem being the restaurant called the Playland Motel home, and the oven apparently did not belong to the chef. It’s the latest incident in a turbulent few months for Aycock, who closed the restaurant after he was arrested for growing pot in it back in August. At the time, he said the cops were bugging and it was just catnip and lemon verbena, but he reportedly pleaded guilty to the charges in December.
The heist was performed by Aycock and a friend who says he thought he was just helping his buddy out on November 1. After cutting the hole in the restaurant’s wall, the pair then used a forklift to load the giant, $15,000 Stefano Ferrara oven onto a flatbed truck. The crime scene was discovered the next day by a former manager of the Playland Motel, and video surveillance showed Ayock and his friend entering the space before the camera was covered up. Aycock was arrested on December 13 and charged with criminal mischief.
Of course, ownership of the oven is contested. Jamie Wisemen, whose Cayuua Capital bought the Playland property before closing it at the end of October, maintains that the oven never belonged to Aycock. It sounds like he’s winning this fight: In a civil suit Wiseman filed against Aycock in order to regain access to the Whit’s End space, a judge ruled that the oven and other items belonged to Wiseman. He also supplied evidence of ownership to police for this case, but Aycock’s attorney Joseph Mure Jr. nonetheless maintains that all the former restaurant’s equipment belonged to his client. The oven in question, however, remains at large.
