01-05-2025
Pretzel and Pizza Creations adapts to Frederick's changing landscape in its more than 30 years downtown
Having been in downtown Frederick for over 30 years, Pretzel and Pizza Creations has seen and adapted a lot.
Natalia Nastovici, a Romanian immigrant, opened the family-run restaurant in 1991, taking over for a different pretzel business.
Pretzels were hot, primarily in malls, but Nastovici wanted her shop to be in a different type of location, according to Catie Serio, her daughter and the current owner.
"She wanted to be downtown," Serio said. "She really liked the hustle and bustle, kind of a cosmopolitan feel."
As the business got going, Nastovici noticed much of her foot traffic came from offices, government buildings and the courthouse.
Serio said her mom realized "customers were looking for quick, easy, cheap things to eat in an area where there's not a lot of that." So Nastovici started using the same pretzel dough but wrapped around hot dogs and as the base for sandwiches, pizza and other dishes.
Serio, meanwhile, attended Frederick High School but went to Syracuse University for college and then lived in New York City.
"I wanted a bigger city," she said. "Syracuse is bigger, and then New York is way bigger."
While in New York, she began working for Flying Dog Brewery, based in Frederick at the time, selling to bars and restaurants.
Around the same time, her cousin, Mihai Trica, became the general manager of Pretzel and Pizza Creations. Serio said she also liked the direction the city had been trending and wanted in. So she moved back to Frederick in 2010 and took over operations of the restaurant.
Serio has kept many of her mom's practices, including the dough recipe, blended in-house.
The dough machine is "the work horse of the restaurant," she said.
But Serio has also taken the restaurant in new directions with flavors, the interior layout and other tweaks.
"We've been open for 34 years, and just over the course of time, customers' taste change, people have different food preferences, and we just have to modernize with the times," she said.
