A local business owner who once operated two pizzerias in east and southwest Ocala has closed his second location less than a year after shuttering the first.
J Rocks Pizzeria officially closed its location at 2606 SW 19th Ave Road in Ocala this week. The restaurant announced the closure on social media on Tuesday.
“Family, the J★ROCKS OCALA location is permanently closed. Thank you for 5 awesome years in business. We are so grateful to have met so many wonderful people from all walks of life. We will miss each of you,” reads the statement.
Owned and operated by Jerriel Bazile, J Rocks officially opened for business on June 10, 2019. Its closing comes just a few days shy of the restaurant’s fifth anniversary at the location within the Boyd Center shopping plaza.
Earlier this year, Ocala-News.com reported that Bazile’s other Ocala restaurant, Blue Highway Pizzeria, had suffered the same fate.
Bazile took over that location completely in the fall of 2018, and the restaurant no longer had any connection with two other restaurants of the same name in Micanopy and Tioga.
Blue Highway’s former location is now being converted into a Cajun Jimmy’s Seafood Seller & Cafe, by owners Jimmy Stoltz and Sue Gerzel, who opened their in Crystal River.
Over the past several years, both J Rocks and Blue Highway experienced their fair share of failed health inspections and customer complaints.
In 2021, J Rocks Pizzeria was temporarily closed multiple times after a health inspector found over 100 rodent droppings.
That same year, Blue Highway Pizzeria was also temporarily closed multiple times due to failed health inspections.
Although the restaurants enjoyed many positive reviews online, one of the last Google reviews for Blue Highway Pizzeria was from a customer who allegedly found a small roach crawling over her pizza.
J Rocks Pizzeria’s closure comes just a couple days after Belleview Pizza & Italian Restaurant closed its doors, and around a year after Lorito’s closed its Italian restaurant in east Ocala. Both of those restaurants were open for over five decades under different owners.