Lucy Gellman Photo
Laudano making a pie at Tuesday’s opening.
Nick Laudano didn’t just want a reminder of the Grand Apizza pies he grew up eating as a kid in Fair Haven. He wanted to recreate the entire experience, and move it downtown.
That’s the idea behind Ah-Beetz, Laudano’s newest culinary venture in New Haven. The restaurant opened for business Tuesday on Temple Street between Chapel and Crown.
Fifteen years after opening — and then closing — a Wooster Street pizzeria and eight after moving to Florida to open two still-operating “New Haven style” pizza and Italian restaurants in Boca Raton and Coral Springs, he has returned to the Elm City with a goal: to build a make-your-own pizza franchise across New England and in Florida, starting with two coal-fired ovens.
The vibe: hopping 1970s pizzeria. The kind he knew and loved growing up.
His goal: Open 10 – 15 Ah-Beets outlets in one to two years.
Lucy Gellman Photo
Laudano, with Ronald Grullon.
“I wanted to do something that fit for the masses, and a fast-casual, build-your-own-pizza place doesn’t exist here in New Haven,” he said Tuesday, as the restaurant celebrated its grand opening with fringe-kissed lighting decor and blaring disco numbers. “The concept fits more for the time frame of the working class and people on the go, with the affordable price — while keeping the traditional, authentic New Haven product. Pizza’s been in my blood for a long time.”
That product is a thin-crust pizza with a supple dough (Laudano’s top secret recipe) and fresh toppings that one orders on a Tikkaway or Pitaziki-like assembly line, instead waiting on a piping hot kitchen masked in Italian aromas and a fair share of mystery.
As a kid in Fair Haven, Laudano was raised on Grand Apizza and Palm Beach Pizza. He discovered the New Haven trilogy — Modern, Sally’s and Pepe’s — only after he was a teenager and had begun to work at Alfano’s Pizzeria in Morris Cove, then owned by his uncle.
Between bites of “the best” pies he can remember — plain pizzas with anchovies; doughy disks laden with bacon and onion; even the occasional potato slice — he realized that he didn’t want to spend his life consuming New Haven pizza (although that was, and remains, a solid fall back plan). He wanted to share it with regional, and then national, audiences.
“I always wanted to do something where we could bring the actual New Haven style, if not nationally, to the East Coast, up and down Washington, Westchester,” he said. “I think we have the best pizza style around, and what we produce is the top one, two, three on any given night to compete with Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern.”
“We fit a sector in the market,” he added. “You have the Papa John’s, Little Caesars, Dominoes over to the left; they do their delivery. Then you have like the Grimaldi’s, the Pepe’s, the Sally’s, the sit-down [places] that take a long time to eat. You’re there for an hour an a half, it’s a $20 or more pizza.
“So this little niche here is something of the future. As we roll this out and start to expand, we think that it’ll fit … We’re the Shake Shack, Panera Bread, Chipotle … of pizza.”
Tuesday, that translated to an assembly line where a handful of five staff members attended to each made-to-order pie in real time, aiming for a $14 product in 10 – 12 minutes from start to finish.
As one customer watched his pizza enter the oven with a childlike excitement, the cheese about to bubble madly, Laudano and staffer Ronald Grullon got cracking on a tomato and fresh mozzarella pizza
As the two prepared the pizza in unison, they smiled out at the restaurant, a still-pristine spectacle of new-old decor, blown-up Laudano family photos, and glinting, art deco-style lampshades that recall an earlier era.
The name — a phonetic translation of the pie that started it all for Laudano — seemed like the right choice in that moment, Laudano said.
“Apizza’s in my blood. Thin crust, character with char — it’s apizza. That’s what we’re looking to take across the board.”