‘Tell MIT to bring us back’: Cambridge Pizza closes after three decades as MIT reclaims building for renovations
Owners hope to return after construction, but said the Institute offered no alternative space and no guarantee of coming back
Photo courtesy of Ryan Ruiz
Veronika Moroz–The Tech
Cambridge Pizza, the family-run pizzeria that served MIT students and neighbors from its Massachusetts Avenue storefront for 31 years, has closed. This comes after MIT, its landlord, ended the restaurant’s month-to-month tenancy and required it to vacate the building by June 30 to make way for renovations. The first public word of the closure came from a notice posted near the cash register urging MIT to “bring us back.”
“We just wanted to give the students of MIT a notice because we’ve been there for so long, and we’re really close with the community, so we didn’t want to just disappear one day,” said Aydin Demir, who owns and operates the restaurant with his brother Evrim, in an interview with The Tech. By the time of the interview, Cambridge Pizza had already ceased operations and begun moving out its equipment.
The MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) owns the building, and the family deals with the Institute through one of its partners, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), according to Demir. The restaurant has operated without a formal lease for over seven years, paying rent on time month-to-month.
According to Demir, MIT is planning roughly a year of construction on the building: an elevator serving the Zeta Psi fraternity housed upstairs, accessible restrooms and ramps for the restaurant space, and other work to bring the building up to code with the city. The brothers were asked to leave by the end of June with no promise of return. “We had no say in the matter,” Demir said.
Demir said he asked whether MIT had another Institute-owned space the restaurant could move into, given the length of the relationship. “There was no ‘you can move here’ or ‘we can bring you back,’” he said. “There wasn’t a lot of help from their end.” MITIMCO did not reply to The Tech’s request for comment.
Cambridge Pizza is not the only tenant affected. Beantown Taqueria, which shares the building, is “getting removed as well,” Demir said, though as of late June it had not yet stopped operating. His understanding is that only one restaurant space will remain once the renovations are complete. “We’re hoping that it will be us that comes back,” he said. Beantown Taqueria did not give a comment in time for the publication of this article.
Rather than contest the decision, the brothers chose to leave quietly. “We didn’t want to fight with MIT. We’ve been there for 30 years,” Demir said. “So maybe there are better chances of us returning in the future.”
For Demir, the case for a return rests on what the restaurant has meant to the neighborhood. Cambridge Pizza was open from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. — 18 hours a day, every day — and delivered until close. “It’s a safe space for students to go late at night to get food, or just come hang out — even sometimes just get a drink,” he said. “It was part of the community.” Cambridge Pizza was also the only pizzeria that accepted TechCASH.
Students who answered The Tech’s survey largely echoed him. Hannah Flitman ’28 called the closure “an immeasurably tragic loss for the MIT community,” writing that Cambridge Pizza was “uniquely influential amongst students,” as one of the few food options open late at night and one of the few that took TechCASH. “You know you had a good night out when it ended at 4 a.m. at Cambridge Pizza and it was, in all senses, truly iconic,” she wrote. “Its closure is genuinely saddening and a worrisome blow to MIT’s student culture.”
“This is the worst news I have heard all year,” wrote Kai Beasley ’28, who described the restaurant as “a staple of the community” and, with almost nothing else within walking distance open past 10 p.m., often the only choice for students hungry late at night. Some of his best memories of the past year, he wrote, were late-night trips there with student theater group LOST after long days working on their productions. “I will dearly miss their mozzarella sticks and two-liter Pepsi.”
Elijah Haga ’28, a regular whose order was two pepperoni slices and a Brisk iced tea, wrote that he was “devastated.” The restaurant sat close to Building N52 and stayed open “way after everything else is closed,” he wrote. “At 2 a.m. after working all night, it tasted like heaven.”
Zach Walton ’29 kept his response short, ending with an echo of the sign by the register: “They were the only places close by that were open at the unreasonable hour of the night I wanted food. Bring them back!”
The family’s stake in that stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is generational. Demir’s father, Oktay Demir, immigrated from Türkiye and opened the restaurant in 1995; Aydin and Evrim later took it over as the second generation of owners. The elder Demir died earlier this year.
“Maybe you could say it’s the American Dream,” Aydin Demir said of his father’s story. “I grew up going there from a young age. There are photos of me there when I was five years old. It’s more than just a restaurant to us; it’s also our family’s place.”
MIT told the family that construction is expected to take one year, Demir said. “But I wish there was some guarantee that after one year we could come back and set up shop again.”
Demir made no secret of why he agreed to speak. “I want MIT to see how important we are for the community, and I want them to really consider bringing us back.”
Jaden Chizuruoke May contributed reporting to this article.