The beloved Joe Squared may be gone, but a new restaurant will soon dish out slices from its former home in Station North.
Ema’s Corner will offer a menu of pizza, wings and salads that in a couple months may expand to include pasta dishes and Mediterranean appetizers, “depending on the mood,” said owner Mehmet Guclu, who lives in Baltimore. He’s eyeing September as the month he’ll open at 33 W. North Ave., and said the restaurant is named after his two-year-old daughter.
“I’ll make sure everybody is going to leave here happy,” Guclu told The Baltimore Sun. “Giving them the best service, quality food and quality ingredients.”
At a liquor board hearing Thursday, the pizza concept received approval for a liquor license with a request for outdoor table service and live entertainment.
Live entertainment will function as “more of an accessory, in terms of ambience, as opposed to something to draw in ticketed crowds,” Abraham Hurdle, an attorney representing Guclu, told the board. During Joe Squared’s tenure, local students and artists put on shows in the pizzeria’s basement performance space, called Downsquares.
“We’re going to try a couple different options,” Guclu said of the plan for live music. He intends for Ema’s Corner to be open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to midnight Thursday through Sunday.
No stranger to pies, Guclu is also the owner of Iggies Pizza in Mount Vernon, which he said he purchased a year ago, and the former manager of HomeSlyce in Columbia.
The announcement that Joe Squared was closing came from the restaurant’s collective of worker-owners in November, and cited lower turnout and higher expenses post-pandemic as contributing factors.
“It’s a busy area downtown that’s kind of always missed having a place in that area,” Hurdle told the liquor board.