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Peace, love and pizza moving across town

Melody Crawford could not help interrupting herself while she was telling a visitor about moving Two Guys Pizza & Ribs across town to Seventh Avenue East. She wanted to announce the news to all the patrons she knew, which seemed to be all of them.

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“Tomorrow’s the last night here,” she shouted across the barroom to a table of arrivals on Friday night  

Familiar faces are the rule, not the exception, at Two Guys, the popular pizzeria and rib joint that’s been tossing pies on West Barnwell Street for the past five years and operated on U.S. 64 at Oak Street before that.
“Everything will be the same,” Melody says. “Nothing’s changed in our kitchen. The oven is mine. It’s the same great ribs, the same great pizza. It’s a very big mountain we have climbed in the last eight years.”
Melody, the most popular purveyor of peace, love and pizza downtown, and her husband, John, have built Two Guys into a successful restaurant with a loyal following. Unlike the restaurants on Main Street, Two Guys has never benefited from the festival crowds and street closings, Cawford says. Instead, its bread and butter — or its garlic knots, in this instance — is local repeat business.

Asked if she’s nervous whether the loyal patrons will follow her to Seventh Avenue, she says not at all. After leasing for eight years downtown and on U.S. 64, the couple seized their dream and bought the building at 1307 Seventh Avenue East, just up from Lowe’s. She sees huge upside potential for the 5,000-square-foot space, which last operated as a Mexican restaurant.
“We took that old building and turned it around,” she says. “It looks so good.”
She gushes over the spacious new parking lot. “I never had a new parking lot. It’s like a diamond ring, I swear,” she says. She thinks the extra parking and easy access just off Four Seasons Boulevard will translate into more business, not less.
“Hopefully, lunch will double,” she says.
Although the owners are dropping liquor by the drink, they will stock a larger selection of wine and — riding the region’s craft beer boom — will increase the draft beer taps to 30. The Crawfords are also eager to show off the dining room’s new stage for live music and a grassy courtyard, surrounded by a tall chained link fence, that Melody says will be perfect for families with toddlers. While the mainstay favorites like pizza, Italian dishes, ribs and sandwiches will remain, Melody and John are planning to add a few new menu items as well.
“What I want to say mainly is that I could not have done this without my fabulous team,” she says. The team tilts heavily toward family; those that aren’t blood kin have become part of the Two Guys family, too.
“My kitchen staff has been here from Day 1,” she says. Cooks include Mark Berger, Bolo and Flash and her son, Ryan. Ryan manages the back while his brother, Christian, runs the front of the house. Daughter Lacie waits tables. John does the ordering and other administrative work. “He built all that you see back there,” Melody says of the bar.
The eclectic décor, made up of hundreds of pictures, statuettes and pop art classics, will be leaving with her when she closes up on Barnwell for the last time Saturday night and begins the big move.
Two Guys becomes the second locally owned, locally operated restaurant, with patrons that are mostly local, to move. The move didn’t hurt AlyKat, which saw its business increase when it moved from the old Harris Teeter shopping center to Asheville Highway.
With her gleaming smile and hugs for all, Melody somehow seems to be, as her name would imply, the music that makes the place sing. The address might change but the theme song remains the same.
“This is my house,” she says. “I want people to feel at home.”

Two Guys is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It plans to open at 1307 Seventh Ave. East on Friday.