Giovanni and Brooke Caravello and Molly and Riccardo Marciano (Photo: Michael Donahue)
The story of “Little Italy East,” slated to open around the beginning of June at 6300 Poplar Avenue, Suite 113, began in Italy.
Two of the owners of the new location are from Italy. Giovanni Caravello is from Sicily and Riccardo Marciano is from Calabria.
They met their wives — owners Brooke Caravello and former Memphian Molly Marciano — in New York.
Giovanni’s mom did the cooking when he was growing up. He worked at the family restaurant after his family moved to New York.
He met Brooke, who was majoring in psychology at Queens College, when they were both working at a New York pizzeria. “I was a pizza maker there,” he says. “She was a waitress.”
They moved to Memphis in 2013 and got married the next year. “I had some family down here,” Brooke says.
Giovanni began working as a dishwasher at the Little Italy at 1495 Union Avenue. “Before we moved to Memphis we were looking at jobs around here. Little Italy was hiring, so I applied. And they hired me.”
He worked his way up. Little Italy’s owner Bill Giannini, who was commuting from Nashville, decided to sell it. “We bought it from him in 2014,” Giovanni says.
And, he adds, “We changed all the recipes, too.”
“Most of the ingredients they were using was frozen, processed, and pre-packaged,” Brooke says. “The biggest change was everything we used was fresh produce.”
And, she says, “The sauces are all made from fresh ingredients. High quality. Everything is made in-house daily. The pasta dishes are made to order.”
In 2016, they opened the Little Italy at 7717 US-70 in Bartlett. “I ran that one,” Brooke says. “And Giovanni ran Midtown.”
They sold the Bartlett restaurant to Giovanni’s cousin in 2018. “He purchased it outright, but it’s still Little Italy,” Giovanni says. “Same recipes.”
Giovanni and Brooke did the same thing with their old Downtown location at 106 GE Patterson Avenue. They bought it in 2019 and sold it in 2020. But, he says, “It’s still Little Italy.”
The new location in East Memphis will be their “first partnership going into it,” Giovanni says.
As for that partnership, he says, “I met Riccardo. He just came into the restaurant, Little Italy in Midtown, with a few friends. We started talking. And down the road we became friends.”
“Just finding another native Italian in Memphis is pretty unique,” Brooke says. “And they immediately bonded.”
And Molly “being an American wife married to an Italian” was “super unique,” she adds. “They became like family pretty quickly.”
Riccardo told Giovanni he always wanted to open a restaurant. “East Memphis came up and we had the opportunity to open one together.”
“I knew how to cook Italian food,” Riccardo says. He used to help his grandmother make her “Sunday homemade sauce,” he says. “Every Sunday was a feast in my house. A lot of my family and friends.”
Molly met Riccardo “on a blind date in New York,” she says. “We met outside of an Italian restaurant.”
They moved to Memphis in 2018. Riccardo always felt Memphis is “more like Italy. The hospitality. The Southern mentality is like Southern Italy.”
The Little Italy in East Memphis will be similar to the Midtown Little Italy, which the Caravellos still own and operate.“The base menu is the same,” Giovanni says. “Also, the recipes are going to be the same. There will be a couple of different pasta dishes. More Italian inspired.”
They also will serve paninis and New York-style pizzas.
They’ll serve Grandma’s Pizza, which uses “the same mozzarella cheese and fresh garlic and fresh basil.”
It’s one of their most popular pizzas on Union Avenue. “It’s the love that we put in it,” Brooke says. “The Italian love.”
The Little Italy “East” is their last Little Italy for now, Giovanni says. “None in the near future. We want to see how this goes first. And then we can plan some other locations.”
They’re always open to new ideas “as long as we can maintain the quality and level of service and everything that I think the community has grown to appreciate,” Brooke says.
“I’m so thrilled,” Riccardo says. “Real excited. Nervous. And overwhelming. Because my life will change a lot when I open that door.”
When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore. It’s true that a good pizza, fresh out the oven, is akin to that warm, fuzzy feeling of love, but there’s no need to take one to the face to enjoy Italy’s culinary magnum opus. Memphis has long been cultivating its approach to the pizza game, with restaurants showing off their take on New York-style, to Chicago-style, to Bluff City-style (we’re always down for a barbecue chicken pizza).
For our 2023 pizza issue, we sent our intrepid reporters across the city to try out 10 different pizza joints. Their conclusion? Any way you slice it, Memphis’ pizza game is going strong.
Photo: Jon W. Sparks
Slim & Husky’s – P.R.E.A.M.
If you often think to yourself that “Pizza Rules Everything Around Me,” then you’re ready for Slim & Husky’s P.R.E.A.M.
The artisanal pie’s highlight is a splendid white sauce along with the S+H cheese blend on top of a perfectly prepared and crunchy thin crust. It’s festooned with spinach, pepperoni, pulled Italian sausage, mushrooms, and red onions.
As the onion bits were sparse and the mushrooms merely present, it was up to the other elements to carry the day. The sausage was particularly good, with a distinctive flavor, and the spinach and pepperoni rounded out the appeal of the dish.
The elongated pie is cut into squarish shapes and invites the hungry diner to dig in. If you eat inside, the atmosphere is welcoming, with soul music in the air and delightful artwork of luminaries such as Aretha Franklin and Isaac Hayes on the walls.
The staff is friendly and helpful, and it’s clear a lot of thought has gone into making dishes that go far beyond the standard offerings of the big chains. Nashville-based Slim & Husky’s is also a chain, but you’ll feel right at home chowing down on a well-made pizza. — Jon W. Sparks
Remember the pizza they served in elementary school? It was square because it baked on the cookie sheets the school kitchen already had. It was not great (or even good) by normal pizza standards, but it was the pinnacle of school kitchen culinary creation. Maybe, if you’re lucky, your grandma tried to recreate that magic at home with a scratch-made crust and an assist from Chef Boyardee.
Imagine that pizza made by a real pizzeria. That’s the Grandma’s Pizza at Little Italy.
“It’s a New York thing,” says owner Giovanni Caravello. “Somebody’s grandma used to make it like that. It’s a lot more popular up there than it is down here. If you tell people from the North it’s a Grandma’s pizza, they know what it is.”
On the menu, it’s listed as thin crust, but in practice, the Grandma rises a bit more than the standard thin crust. It comes basic with fresh mozzarella patches and exposed sauce, but it’s substantial enough to load on the toppings, if that’s what you’re into.
Another good thing: It has more crust (thanks, geometry!). And if you ask for it to be cut in smaller pieces, it can be good finger food for a party.
Little Italy opened in Midtown in 2004 and recently expanded Downtown. And a third location is expected to open in early April to spread Grandma’s comfort to East Memphis. — Chris McCoy
When I first glanced at the menu at Slice of Soul Pizza Lounge, located at 1299 Madison Avenue, an instant feeling of FOMO fell upon me. I was bitten by the “New Year, New Me” bug, and this trickled down to my eating choices. There were so many appetizing options, with Memphis-themed names, such as the “Pyramid Parmesan Chicken” and the signature Bellevue loaded potato, that made my decision to settle for the vegetable pizza even harder. However, as I took a bite of the seven-inch Al B. Green slice, I realized I was far from settling.
According to Anthony Latiker, the owner of Slice of Soul, the Al B. Green is one of the most popular options, and it’s no surprise. Latiker explained that it can be hard to describe the style of their pizza, as it’s simply their own take on a classic food item.
The slice consisted of “obese deliciousness of spinach, black olives, green olives, mushrooms, onions, roasted red peppers, green bell peppers, and banana peppers.” Not only did this huge portion provide me with a filling dinner, but the presentation provided an aesthetic worthy of the “phone eats first narrative.” — Kailynn Johnson
In 2018, at my first visit to Dino’s Grill, I fell in love, not with my date sat across from me for my freshman year sorority formal — the one who didn’t know how to properly punctuate contractions and who didn’t take kindly to constructive criticism. Oh no, I fell in love with the plate of spaghetti with marinara before me. And while my standards for choosing a formal date were low, my standards for spaghetti with marinara have always been high. And let’s just say Dino’s is now my new standard. It’s my favorite thing in all of Memphis. Seriously.
Blobby chows down on leftovers. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
And so as my deadline for this pizza issue loomed ahead of me, I dreaded ordering anything but spaghetti at Dino’s. How could I betray my love? And yet I did. For the sake of journalism. I ordered a cheese pizza. And hot damn, have I been missing out! The pizza comes with Dino’s signature marinara, the marinara I already love, and the pizza crust is thin just like my grandpa would’ve made it. How could I not love it? It’s simply delicious, and I had to withhold myself from eating all eight slices. Now, I fear that the next time I go to Dino’s, instead of immediately ordering my go-to pasta, I’ll have to make a decision between pasta and pizza. Lord, help me. — Abigail Morici
Tamboli’s Cacio e Pepe is an extraordinary and unusual pizza — and well worth a trip to the funky and delightful mother-ship restaurant on Madison Avenue.
Cacio e Pepe is built on the premise that a pizza with courage and ambition can forge its own path, forgoing such conventional building blocks as red sauce, tomatoes, meat, or, you know, vegetables and stuff. This is a pizza with heart — and lots of chewy and spicy goodness that will win you over.
This is a pizza that begins its climb to greatness with a whipped ricotta cheese base which is topped by a thick, gooey layer of mozzarella, some edgy pecorino Romano, freshly cracked black pepper, and the piece de resistance — white truffle oil. Get back, y’all!
Let’s be real, here: This is basically a mixed-cheese dance party that’s oven-baked and wood-fired on top of Tamboli’s wonderful house-made dough. The pepper and truffle oil merely serve to elevate it to bliss level.
Pro Tip: Cacio e Pepe pairs beautifully with Tamboli’s Caesar Salad, which also features Pecorino Romano, plus toasted pine nuts with house-made dressing. — Bruce VanWyngarden
Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza, 1761 Madison Ave., tambolis.com
Photo: Izzy Wollfarth
Memphis Pizza Café – Buffalo Chicken Pizza
Memphis Pizza Café has built its reputation on being one of the few pizza places that has mastered perfectly crispy and thin crust. But achieving that perfect crust harmony isn’t the only thing Memphis Pizza Café is famous for. What elevates this pizza joint is the balance of unique flavors found in every variation of pizza. Whether this is through their traditional subs, calzones, or cheese sticks filling bellies during happy hour (Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m.), there is not one place where flavor is lost. And one of the most popular flavors is their Buffalo Chicken Pizza.
Taking a bite of their Buffalo Chicken Pizza will have diners begging for more. The secret of these flavors can be found in their marinated chicken tossed with mozzarella and cheddar on an olive oil-based pizza served with Frank’s special sauce and ranch dressing. While the contents of Frank’s sauce might not be known to us yet, our hunger for more will soon reveal the truth. — Izzy Wollfarth
Walking into Boscos on Overton Square, I feel a bit of nostalgia. Not only were they the first brew pub in Tennessee when they opened their Germantown location in 1992, they had the first wood-fired oven in the city. Pizza and beer are a sublime combination, and Boscos perfected both a long time ago. More than 30 years later, how well I remember the first wood-fired pizza I had there: It was a revelation.
I’m happy to report that Boscos hasn’t lost their touch. The only difference is that now you can see your pie being made at the pizza bar. Ordering a Palermo, I settle in to watch Chef Ashley roll out the crust, trim the edges, and apply the sauce, cheese, and other toppings. Then she slides it into the roaring heat of the wood-fired oven behind her. What emerges is transformed. The hard wheat crust rises ever so slightly, taking on an airy crunch, while the sauce tastes as fresh as farmers market tomatoes. The pepperoni and sausage crisp up nicely, but it’s the succulent portobello mushrooms that really make this pizza. Add a pint of Boscos’ own Famous Flaming Stone steinbier, and there you have it: a classic pairing done right, withstanding the test of time. — Alex Greene
I invited singer-songwriters Dylan Dunn and Ava Carrington to try a deep-dish pizza from Izzy & Adams.
Only one slice of the 14-inch Chicago Dude pizza was left when we finished. Dunn took that slice with him in a to-go box to a band rehearsal. The pizza, obviously, was a hit. “It’s the best pizza I’ve ever eaten,” he says.
Carrington, who doesn’t like pizza, loved the Izzy & Adam’s pizza we tried. The Chicago Dude, which includes pepperoni, onion, garlic, and giardiniera pepper mix, is so mouth-wateringly delicious. It’s dense, thick, and so full of flavor. It’s one of six speciality pizzas from Izzy & Adam’s.
Owner Ryan Long, who named the restaurant after his sons Isaac and Adam, describes the two-inch-or-so deep-dish pizza as a “cheese lover’s pizza.”
As Long told me in an earlier interview, “There’s a lot of cheese on it. It’s kind of a different pizza. There’s more filling. And it’s just unique to Chicago because it was invented there.”
With deep dish, “you put ingredients on the bottom, then the cheese, and the sauce goes on top of it all. And it’s garnished with Romano cheese and Parmesan.”
They use raw Italian sausage on their deep dish, as well as their thin-crust pizzas, Long told me. “We put on quarter-size pieces and it cooks in the oven. The grease from that pork gets released into the sauce. That’s what makes it damn good.”
Long knows whereof he speaks. He grew up in Rolling Meadows in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. — Michael Donahue
Izzy & Adam’s, 6343 Summer Ave., Suite 110
Photo: Samuel X. Cicci
Silly Goose – Farm Daddy
So many bars turned to pizza as their solution to the Covid-induced financial and operating woes. I was surprised as anyone several years ago when I discovered that Downtown’s Silly Goose — a bar/lounge where I’d before unwittingly stumbled into a sleazy-esque late-night poker tournament and had several shots bought for us by a blackout patron dressed as Woody from Toy Story — had reemerged as a gourmet pizza destination. (Don’t worry, it’s still a late-night hot spot.)
I posted up at the bar and ordered a Farm Daddy, which brought the farm-fresh tastes directly to my seat with a bevy of ingredients: scallions, mushrooms, smoked bacon, wood-fire baked chicken, mozzarella, and Parmesan tossed in a house-made roasted garlic cream sauce. Silly Goose’s pizzas are the perfect bar snack, enough heft to stave off that impending hangover, but just light enough to avoid feeling stuffed while downing beers at the bar.
As a bonus, it turned out I’d stumbled into Silly Goose during its Thursday “2 for $20” pizza deal, so I also snagged The Roni, their take on a classic pepperoni pizza with Grana Padano, mozzarella, and marinara sauce. All in all, it was a pretty good deal, and I think these pizzas make for a perfect late-night snack. And it’s easy to enjoy them in Silly Goose’s lounge area, combining the ski lodge aesthetic of rustic stacked log pillars with an airy walled garden vibe from a colorful sea of hanging wisterias. — Samuel X. Cicci
Pizza and beer make for an iconic duo. And the crossover between two big names in Memphis’ hospitality scene made that combination even more enticing when Wiseacre’s Kellan and Davin Bartosch teamed up with Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman.
Little Bettie’s Pizza and Snacks, open at Downtown’s Wiseacre HQ, focuses on New Haven-style pizzas: thin-crust, wood fired pies with a bit of char and a chewier texture, almost made in a similar vein to classic Neapolitan pizzas. There are plenty of interesting choices to pick, but one pizza reigns supreme above all: the Thud Butt.
I haven’t quite found another pie around town like the Thud Butt. Whisking together both sweet and savory tones, the pizza blends the silkiness and rich, fatty taste of mortadella drizzled with black pepper honey and a pistachio stracciatella, with a heaping dollop of homemade cheesy mayo in the center for good measure. That’s a whole lot of different flavors combined together in a pretty innovative way.
But if, like me, you’re allergic to pistachios, fret not! Every pizza is a good pizza at Little Bettie’s, with the added perk of being able to enjoy a slice alongside Wiseacre’s top-notch brews. Now that’s amore. — SXC
Little Bettie’s Pizza & Snacks, 398 S. B.B. King Blvd., wiseacrebrew.com
We had an opportunity to attend the soft opening of Slim and Husky’s, a new build-your-own-style pizzeria in downtown Memphis. The owners, Derrick Moore, Emanuel Reed, and Clint Gray started as high school buddies. Now they’ve become wildly successful business tycoons. What started out as a dream in a garage making their favorite pizza concoctions has snowballed into seven stores and counting. They are largely community focused and believe that supporting those they serve is paramount.
Christen Hill
Slim and Husky’s staff presents Nashville Hot pizza
Memphis Flyer: So you say you had an executive chef, to help build your initial recipes?
Clint Gray: We brought in an executive chef, Chef Jason Williams, to, you know, kind of help us hone our craft and get the pieces together and the flavor profiles right. So we worked on that for like two years. In the process, North Nashville was going through gentrification, the early stages. And so we use our product to, basically, unite different neighbors that had issues with each other, at like community organization events or like clean-up events or just neighborhood meetings and things like that.
Did y’all have a storefront at the time?
No, we didn’t. We made it out of the garage. It was just a commercial garage. I’m not gonna say we outfitted it, but we made it happen. It was basically empty.
Did people pay?
No, no, we were giving it all away for free.
So how did you afford to give pizza away?
Yeah, so we had our own company running at the time. A transportation business, moving and storage, and expediting. So we were still doing that in the process of figuring out how to make a pizza.
So pizza was your big dream?
It was just… hospitality was like some that we really wanted to get into. Pizza historically is low-cost startup. However, we wanted to create a pizza product that was fitting for the neighborhood, but also gave you a lot of culture. And that’s where pizza, art, and music came in.
Christen Hill
Slim and Husky’s Owners Clint Gray, Emauel Reedy and Derrick Moore pose for a photo
Oh, okay. Tell me about it.
So our theme is pizza art and music. So, you know, we want our spaces to feel like mini art galleries. So like even in this space, you know, we’ve got about five or six art pieces that haven’t gone up yet but that wall behind you will be full of art. And then we’ve got an art gallery that’s going upstairs.
How long has Slim & Husky’s been in Nashville?
We opened march of 2017. And we opened our second store in July — I’m sorry — in June of 2017, and then another six months later we opened the third. And then we went to Atlanta a year after that. And then, six months after that, we opened another one in Atlanta. And then we opened our sixth location in Sacramento, California,
Sactown! What do you think has been the cause of the success of your store? I mean, it’s just pizza.
It’s just been a combination of a few things, I think. You know, starting off, I would say pizza — our product is really good. Then, just, we’re very authentic and how we do things not just on the pizza side but just our brand in general. We are a very active community-based business. So for example, I guess today we fed over 600 teachers here. You know, our social impact initiatives revolves around education. So, we always feed teachers first in our restaurants. We just do tons of community work. On the 21st of December in Nashville, we’re feeding an entire housing project. We provide frozen pizza for them to have throughout the holidays. We’re always looking to give back and engage the community, the same way we engage customers.
Whatever happened to the transportation company?
We sold it.
How do you keep up now with all of the demand of the restaurants?
We’re very big on scaling and systems. Going into our business, we took a lot from the movie The Founder, and how McDonald’s was built. So every process that we started out doing we would document, from day one. We still document that day — like changes that we make. We create SOPs and systems and checklists, like a lot of new restaurants starting off won’t have ready until about three or four years. We did those things on day one.
Was hiring all-black staff, building laborers and skilled workers intentional?
Very Intentional. We believe in ownership, as well as keeping the dollars in our communities. So we purchased this building, and we developed it with Fifer and Associates, spending the development of dollars with other black-owned companies. Because we want to build our communities and build our culture and show people that we can do things on our own. That was very important to us. I think we’re responsible for the inclusion process before anybody else. America has never really done a great job of including us. We’re not the type of businessman and not gonna sit back and wait. We want to make things happen for ourselves in our community.
How did you come across the builders for the space?
So, Fifer and Associates is an awesome company. First and foremost, but we’ve had a great a lot of different friends and family. Through friends from Tennessee State University. Somebody we reached out to initially, And I believe Moe met Carlos through Anderson contractors. We were all roommates in college at TSU. Moe and I both signed with my football at TSU. And so we became teammates, friends, and we just kind of stuck with each other since college and, you know, kind of worked on building our dreams together.
Christen Hill
Slim and Husky’s employee taking an order.
Do you have a passion for cooking, or do you have a passion for eating?
Moe and I both have passions for cooking. I’m a pro-amateur chef, not quite, all the way pro but we’re not all the way amateur. And then EJ is like a taste tester.
You have six stores. Why is Memphis number seven?
Memphis was initially supposed to be the third store we have. We bought this building and it was a really big project from a renovation standpoint. It’s a 95-year-old building. COVID really slowed it down, so it ended up taking about a year and a half, two years.
What’s your next plan, taking over the whole world?
We’ve got two more openings. Pretty soon we got downtown Nashville, on Broadway. it’s gonna be real big for us. And it sits right in the same complex of the new National Museum of African American Music. And then we’ve got another one in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We’ve hired a super strong team here in Memphis. And we’re really excited because we’ve been able to recruit people with restaurant experience; managers, assistant managers, as well as just our core talent in this store. We are really confident in, and prepared to provide Memphis with a top-notch product.
What’s the best seller at Coletta’s restaurants during the quarantine?
“That’s very easy,” says owner Jerry Coletta. “Pizza, pizza, pizza.”
But their famous barbecue pizza — the logical choice — isn’t No. 1. Round the World, which has everything on it, is No. 1, followed by the All Meat, which has sausage and beef, pepperoni, and Canadian bacon, Coletta says. Their barbecue pizza is No. 3.
Coletta’s, which has been doing takeout, recently reopened its dining rooms with limited seating at both of its locations.
I asked Coletta about the history of the pizzas. “When Pizza Hut started advertising ‘Meat Lovers Pizza,’ we started getting deluged with orders for Meat Lover’s Pizza. So, we call it ‘All Meat.’ It’s really a Meat Lover’s Pizza.” That’s been 15 or 20 years ago, Coletta says. Round the World is much older. “My dad came up with that back in the ’50s.”
Coletta’s is a pizza pioneer in Memphis. “Back in the early ‘50s we had sailors coming in from the Navy base when they had the Navy base in Millington. They had had pizza in New York and Chicago and they were asking my dad why he didn’t put pizza on our menu. Of course, he didn’t know anything about pizza, but he actually went to Chicago to learn how to make pizzas.
“When he came back, he put pizza on the menu, but it wasn’t going over too well ‘cause it was a new type of food. People didn’t know what it was. Then he came up with the idea of the barbecue pizza. Of course, in Memphis everyone knows barbecue, and it sparked an interest in pizza. Barbecue pizza remains our signature item today.”
And that was Elvis’ favorite, Coletta says. The King dined on barbecue pizza at Coletta’s on South Parkway. Priscilla Presley, who likes Coletta’s lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs, used to pick up barbecue pizzas to-go.
The old Coletta’s on Summer was one of my go-to date-night places for dinner, but that restaurant burned a while back and didn’t reopen. Coletta’s has a location on Appling Road, but my all-time favorite is the restaurant on South Parkway. That was the original location of Coletta’s.
Jerry’s grandfather, Emil Coletta, opened Coletta’s in 1923. His father, Horest Coletta, ran the restaurant for years. “In three years we’ll be celebrating our 100th anniversary.”
The South Parkway restaurant originally was much smaller. “The room where the bar is used to be the whole restaurant,” Coletta says. ”The door opened on the Parkway.”
I love that iconic drinking spot with its red vinyl bar. “We put the bar in in 1971,” he adds. ”Liquor by the drink became legal in 1970.” Lots of people love that bar, according to Coletta. “Well, it’s a combination of the black tables and the red. It just lends to a relaxing atmosphere.”
But you can’t kick back with a cocktail in the bar these days. “It’s still against the rules right now to open the bar,” Coletta says. “Just the dining room may be open now.” They opened the dining room May 4th. “We’re taking out of service every other table so the people are eight to ten feet apart. All the servers are wearing gloves and masks.”
Dining in hasn’t been popular, Coletta says. “We’re not having a lot of dine-in business. Some days we only have five or six tables. It hasn’t come near what it was, but the takeout business has been good.”
Coletta never experienced anything like the quarantine during his career. “Oh, this is unreal. Every day is a challenge. I have enough sausage to last me another week. I can’t seem to get enough meat to make my sausage. It’s a challenge to find supplies.”
Patrons still can visit another unusual feature of the South Parkway location: the small dining room at the far South side. “We added on that dining room in 1971. It’s supposed to look like an outdoor patio with the blue sky and the stars at night. That’s the effect we try to make back there.”
That dining room reopened this week. “It was a good time to do some remodeling. We repainted the whole room, repainted the statues. It was just a good time to do some maintenance that had been deferred.”
If you don’t want to order one of the top three Coletta’s pizzas, you’ve got many more to choose from. “I would say the possibilities are endless, ” Coletta says. “We list only about 20.”
Is there a Coletta’s pizza that isn’t popular? “We have an onion pizza. Onion and mushroom. It’s one of my favorites, but not too many people order that one.”
His favorite is their sausage, onion, and peppers pizza.
“People ask me if I get tired of eating pizza and I tell them, ‘No, there’s so much variety. You can order a different topping and you get a different meal. I probably eat pizza two or three times a week. And no, I don’t get tired of eating it.’”
Coletta’s is at 1063 South Parkway East (901) 948-7652; and at 2850 Appling Road, (901) 383-1122.
Za Fest celebrates its fifth anniversary this Saturday, November 16th, taking over the new Black Lodge location.
“The festival started out as a small kind of DIY,” says Blair Davis, founder and organizer of Za Fest. “And it still is DIY essentially, and that was its core, just for the community purposes and having other people assist. But we kind of raised our little baby, and now it’s 5 years old, and the masses are hungry. They want pizza.”
Brenna Huff
Power to the pizza
Za Fest, dubbed Memphis’ largest pizza party, will offer an assorted menu of pizza from local eateries like Memphis Pizza Cafe, Garibaldi’s, and Midtown Crossing. Beyond presenting a broad ‘za menu, the festival boasts a diverse lineup that includes electronic music producer DJ Chandler Blingg, singer-songwriter Louise Page, hip-hop artist Coldway, and more.
“Ideally, these smaller communities of pocketed musicians can come together and see that there are cool things in the other pocket,” says Davis. “I think musicians and music, especially, are fairly universal. And the more that we can embrace that the better.”
This year, Za Fest has partnered with Merge Memphis, a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to feeding hungry, less fortunate people, by donating food boxes to families and stocking free food pantries throughout the city. Guests are encouraged to bring canned food items in exchange for raffle tickets or simply make a dollar donation.
“When you’re a starving artist, you may not know what it’s like to be a literal starving person,” says Davis.
Za Fest, Black Lodge, 405 N. Cleveland, Saturday, November 16th, 3 p.m.-2 a.m., $10/presale, $15/door.
No more of those famous veggie burgers. The vegan grilled cheese is going bye-bye too.
It’s a whole new menu and approach at Fuel Cafe, starting March 13th.
Erik Proveaux, owner of Fuel, says that the catering and the food truck business have been doing well enough to float a total reinvention, after eight years.
They’ve introduced a wood fire pizza oven, one that, Proveaux says is cannibalizing the side room a bit.
What Proveaux envisions is all-natural fresh pizzas, with vegan nut cheeses, organic crusts, and meats sourced locally.
Proveaux says he’s been flirting with offering pizza for a while now. To that end, he’s teamed up with Don Gaines, who’ been selling his vegan creations at the Cooper Young Farmers Market.
According to Proveaux, Gaines had approached him for advice about opening his own restaurant. Proveaux thought it was too ambitious and told him so. He suggested starting at a farmer’s market.
Gaines runs something called Pizza Cult. Folks bring him their toppings and he puts them on a pizza. (We heard someone brought him Pho Binh lemongrass tofu.)
Gaines has come to be known as “Pizza Don.”
Proveaux says their pizza will adhere to no particular style, but some of their pies will stretch the imagination, like potatoes and cream, carrots as substitute for bacon.
The burgers will still be sold frozen and through the food truck. The new menu will include small plates and an antipasto platter.
With the pizza and the new menu will come a wine license. They plan to sell all-natural wines.
“It’s a totally different restaurant,” says Proveaux.
When Jeremy Denno ordered his first mobile wood-fired pizza oven from Italy, he didn’t anticipate that his venture into owning his own business would turn into a sort of pizza dynasty.
“It was definitely rolling,” Denno says of his first food truck, Rock ‘N Dough Pizza Co.
That was in 2012.
In early 2013 the former Trolley Stop Market pizza pro opened his first brick-and-mortar restaurant at Park and Ridgeway, soon to be followed by another brick-and-mortar eatery in Jackson, Tennessee, but this time with the words “and Brew Co.” added to the name.
It didn’t take long for Denno and company, namely his wife, mother, and brother, all who work with him in some capacity, to outgrow the East Memphis location, and in 2015, they moved to 3445 Poplar at the corner of Highland.
“It had a bigger kitchen, so we could have a full menu,” Denno says.
Most recently, Denno added Germantown to his list of addresses.
In April, he opened his third brick-and mortar-establishment at 7850 Poplar in the old Maui Brick Oven space across from Whole Foods.
“They were looking for someone to take over their spot. They already had an oven, the mixers, and all the equipment, and we were looking for a presence outside the 240 loop,” Denno says.
Needless to say, business is good.
Folks are still lining up for the New York/traditional, hand-tossed USA! USA! — their version of the supreme — or the Spinning Goat, with spinach, mushroom, and goat cheese. And devotees are also now trying brunch on Sundays, which will eventually expand to Saturdays. Ditto for the wings, burgers, and appetizers, such as Garlic My App — housemade bread with garlic butter, tomato sauce, and goat cheese ($6).
Denno points to his dedication to being an in-house maker and using local ingredients for his success.
“One of the biggest things about what we’re doing is that everything is made in-house — the bread, the sauces. Our veggies are prepped fresh every day, and our meats are roasted and smoked here,” he says.
That, and the fact that he likes to keep it a family affair, even if it’s a joint-family venture.
“Last year we partnered with the Moody Group, a family out of Louisiana. That was always my goal — to get the attention of somebody to help me grow what I think this could be, but they’re still a small family,” he says.
“That’s always been my motto, that we are family-owned and operated,” he says.
As far as the food truck, it will be back and rolling in September.
“We take off during the summer because it’s just too hot, but we’ll be back to full catering in September. That’s the pulse of the business,” Denno says.
Rock ‘N Dough Pizza, 3445 Poplar, Suite 1, 512-6760; 7850 Poplar #6, 779-2008.rockndoughpizza.com
Grimaldi’s Pizzeria can now add Tennessee to its list of states where it serves up its award-winning and distinct coal-fired-, brick-oven-cooked pizza.
On June 21st, the famous pizza chain (which has boasted groupies such as Frank Sinatra and Rudy Giuliani, who were/are regulars at its original Brooklyn Bridge location) opened its doors to the Memphis demographic in Saddle Creek in Germantown.
“The demographic of the area is very good, and it fits our model,” Grimaldi’s president and COO Eric Greenwald says.
The cooking tradition is 100 years old and incorporates 25-ton, hand-built ovens that use 100 pounds of coal daily, heating up to 1,000 to 1,200 degrees and cooking the thin-crust pizzas in three minutes. They also pay attention to their water, using a system that recreates the mineral content of the water used in the original New York establishment.
“It’s a very unique flavor with the coal, and it’s cooked all the way through very fast. So with the New York-style thin crust, it doesn’t dry out,” Greenwald says.
Grimaldi’s serve their pizzas with housemade mozzarella and a secret sauce and several other proprietary ingredients. The restaurant chain specializes in pizzas, calzones, antipasto, salad, and desserts.
“That’s our ‘KIS.’ We keep it simple with five things,” Greenwald says.
They also serve local beers, an extensive draft selection, and a “user-friendly” wine list.
The original Grimaldi’s operated under the Brooklyn Bridge until the owner, Patsy Grimaldi, sold the restaurant to Joey Ciolli in 1995, who later called Greenwald to join in the fun.
“Joey and I had always talked about doing something together. He called me and said, ‘I know what we’re going to do the rest of our lives,'” Greenwald says.
The headquarters are now housed in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Germantown location marks the 47th Grimaldi’s.
Grimaldi’s is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.
Sam Rodriguez opened At’s-A-Pizza in early April on Union in the former Petra site. The restaurant is loosely based on the former Collierville restaurant with the same name.
The Midtown restaurant offers New York-style pizza by the slice or in 10-, 14-, or 18-inch versions. Customers can create their own pizza or choose between 14 options such as the Great White (featuring Alfredo sauce and spinach), but At’s-A-Pizza is hardly pizza-centric.
It’s more of a sit-down Italian restaurant offering table service and an extensive menu of appetizers, salads, panini, pastas, and subs. (One recent patron stood to walk toward the counter for his drink and looked surprised as a waitress intercepted him with a smile.)
“It’s something different, right?” Rodriguez says of the service. “People like it. That surprises them. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s not just pizza only. We can eat some good dishes here.'”
Rodriguez, who has worked in the food industry as a cook for 21 years and at one time lived in Manhattan, is proud of the pasta primavera ($11.95): linguini with green peppers, Greek olives, tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and capers baked in marinara sauce. He cooks the made-from-scratch sauce for four hours.
The calzones and stromboli also are customizable with the former featuring ricotta in addition to mozzarella. The Italian Special ($8.50) stretches across a substantial silver platter and would be disastrous without a knife and fork. Each bite contains a different flavor with pockets of soft ricotta, globs of pepperoni and Italian sausage, and a heavy dose of vegetables.
Customization and selection are central tenets of the At’s-A-Pizza menu. Rodriguez sprinkles a “pixie dust” of Parmesan, oregano, and garlic on top of his pizza but has an alternative for those averse to garlic.
“I want you to feel comfortable. I want you to be my regular customer,” says Rodriguez, who addresses everyone with a “Mr.” or “Mrs.” before their first name. “Enjoy. Sit down like you’re in a home.”
The name of At’s-A-Pizza comes from New York slang, “‘ey, it’s a pizza!”
Beeker’s, a new Midtown carry-out and delivery restaurant, is a reincarnated version of Tucker’s.
The mad-scientist monker fits, not just due to the scientific-apparatus art and themed food items spliced into the menu. It goes beyond the large painting of the periodic table inside an abstract Memphis skyline that greets customers, courtesy of Meredith Wilson of Allie Cat Arts.
Ask Charles Fisher, a former Tucker’s employee and the Beeker’s owner, about the menu, and he’ll launch into a 45-minute monologue that covers nearly every menu item, the popularity of offering half-gallon tea instead of gallon tea (did you know that’s more than five 12-ounce cups?), the importance of Yelp reviews, and each line of the health inspection hanging from the wall.
Bearded, wearing a golf shirt with holes in it, and frantically clicking around his iPad to find various talking points, Fisher could easily be pictured in a lab coat jotting down the result of chemical experiments into a notebook.
The experimenting extends to Beeker’s Big Bunsen burgers, which are ground and hand-formed daily, homemade cheesecakes, and wing sauces like Jekyll and Hyde and Bad Experiment, the latter created and perfected by one of Fisher’s cooks.
Philly Style Protein Prototypes, combining rib-eye with Cheez Whiz ($9.99 for a 12-inch sandwich), and a large collection of hand-cut steaks are also menu staples. The menu lists a PBJ for $997.23, inspiring more than a few curious inquiries (it’s not an actual item), and states the restaurant is “closed Mondays and when Billy Joel is in town.”
Good food is a start, but for a business operating at about 90 percent delivery, customer service is paramount, and Fisher knows it.
Beeker’s is closed on Mondays, but the phone still rings often. A woman recently showed up with her daughter, who brought home a good report card and wanted some wings as a reward. Fisher delayed a trip to the store to fire up the fryer. He also made a salad for a hungry police officer looking for food at 11 p.m. on another Monday.
“If I do whatever it takes to get them to eat here once, I think I can get them hooked most of the time,” Fisher says.
Fisher has kept some of the same staff and menu items from Tucker’s but has made changes.
“Some people think we’re the same business. Why would we go through the trouble of closing down during the busiest time of the year to remodel the store and cut the menu in half? Why would you do that?” Fisher says. “It needed to be redone.”
Memphis ‘cue just got a meat-free facelift with this scrumptious personal pan-sized vegan pizza. Tender morsels of fried mock meat are coated in a tangy barbecue sauce and accompanied by sliced carrots, spinach, and vegan cheddar atop a homemade crust.
Bastet Ank Re, formerly of Deju Vu Creole & Vegetarian Restaurant, has launched Healthy Meals on Wheels, a new vegan lunch delivery division of her catering company, OC Vegan Foods. The BBQ pizza is just one of many delicious noontime options. Every Friday is vegan pizza day, but other days of the week have a rotating menu.
Christen Hill
Christen Hill 
Christen Hill 
Coletta’s Italian Restaurant/Facebook 
Brenna Huff 
Fuel/Facebook 
