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Haci Catalbasoglu: Back home, and at work.
Littleford
Instead of creating PowerPoints in New York about potential corporate mergers, Hacibey Catalbasoglu has spent the pandemic months splitting logs, throwing dough, and memorizing the Napoletana recipe at Brick Oven Pizza on New Haven’s Elm Street.
He’s stepping in to help his dad’s restaurant weather the pandemic. In the process, he’s learning the on-the-ground effects of the laws and policies he hopes to one day shape — and churning out delicious fresh pies.
The Napoletana pie — which is topped with red sauce, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil, and “a little garlic” — needs only five minutes to bake. That’s because Brick Oven Pizza, true to its name, uses a brick oven that warms up to 700 degrees, rather than a gas oven.
While the pie’s baking time is brief, it requires at least a day of preparation. He walked the Independent through the steps to producing a pie perfected over a generation at Brick Oven.
Take-out and delivery orders will prove crucial to the ability of local restaurants like Brick Oven to weather the pandemic during the coming months as Covid-19 cases climb and cold weather sets in. You can order the Napoletana or another Brick Oven pie for pickup or delivery at 203 – 777-4444 — or, for 10 percent off, at newhavenbrickoven.com.
Catalbasoglu has only recently started making pizzas. But he grew up working at Brick Oven, mostly taking calls. His family founded the Elm Street pizzeria in 1999. It has since become a New Haven staple, known for its thin crusts, fire-powered oven, and late-night offerings.
The Napoletana is Catalbasoglu’s favorite pie, because it tastes so light it barely feels like pizza, he said.
Having grown up in New Haven, Catalbasoglu went to college at Yale, where he represented his classmates and other parts of downtown on the Board of Alders and studied political science. For a semester after graduation, he attended Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, before deciding the school wasn’t right for him. (“I didn’t learn at the same pace as I did on the Board of Alders,” he said.) He planned next to work a finance job in Manhattan to save up for law school.
Then the pandemic hit. Like so many other young adults, Catalbasoglu found himself with plans on hold, and a reason to return home.
His family’s restaurant became short-staffed. So Catalbasoglu came back to work full-time as a manager at Brick Oven.
There, the pace of work is different from academia or politics. “Yale was hard, but this is a lot harder,” Catalbasoglu said. The job entails grueling hours and a lot of manual labor.
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Catalbasoglu begins most shifts at 3 p.m. He often leaves at 4 in the morning.
In the past few months, Catalbasoglu said, he has learned that good leaders don’t just give orders; they help do the work alongside their employees.
So he usually starts work by splitting wood with the restaurant’s team from a pile outside the restaurant. The crew then uses the wood and some pieces of newspaper to get the oven’s fire started.
To make the pizza dough, Catalbasoglu has to start the day before. The team pours two cups of sugar, one cup of salt, one cup of olive oil, a few spoonfuls of yeast, and an enormous bag of flour into a mixing machine. There’s a water hose next to the mixer in case the dough gets too dry.
By the time the ingredients are done mixing, the dough is too heavy for one person to lift. At least two people tip the bowl’s contents onto a table and cut up the dough into blocks of various sizes. The dough has to rest for at least a day so that the yeast has time to ferment.
The pandemic has rattled the iconic pizzeria. Inside the restaurant, a plastic sheet separates employees and customers. The state has banned indoor dining past 10 p.m.; since much of the restaurant’s business comes late at night, Brick Oven has eliminated indoor dining altogether. There are roomy tables outside the storefront, but business has still suffered.
After the dough has sat for a day, it’s ready for kneading. Catalbasoglu first pops the air pockets with his fingers. With a rolling pin, he flattens the dough once horizontally, once vertically, and then repeats until he’s satisfied with the circular shape that forms.
If a customer’s watching, he’ll throw the dough into the air. “It doesn’t add anything, but it looks cool,” he said.
When the dough is shaped, he’ll place a dollop of red sauce in the center and use the back of the spoon to swirl it outwards. This method allows for a more even spread. The tomato sauce comes with chunks of tomato, so Catalbasoglu has to mechanically “shred” the sauce before applying it to the dough. (He also adds salt.) He adds fresh mozzarella, a hallmark of the Napolitano pie, diced in 1 centimeter cubes. Then comes the olive oil, shipped from Turkey, and the fresh basil picked straight from the restaurant’s patio.
“Our pizza is really cosmopolitan, kind of reflective of the pizza shop, and kind of reflective of New Haven, too,” Catalbasoglu said.
“I feel like a lot of what I learned at the restaurant has helped me in school,” he added. “You get people from all walks of life.” Customers come from the neighborhood, from Yale, from the Marriott Hotel two blocks away.
Catalbasoglu said he eventually wants to pursue a career in public service, a passion affirmed when he served on the Board of Alders. He’s especially interested in immigration law. Working at Brick Oven, he has gained first-hand experience of the impact of immigration policies on small restaurants like his family’s.
Catalbasoglu’s parents are Turkish immigrants. Most of the employees at Brick Oven are immigrants, too. Small businesses benefit from policies that uplift immigrants, Catalbasoglu emphasized.
“You have people who work so damn hard, and they’re always beaten down on,” he said. “They pay taxes … It’s crazy how the decisions in D.C. trickle down.”
When the pie is ready to bake, Catalbasoglu uses a wooden spatula to insert the pizza into the oven, about six inches from the flames. Before sliding the pizza in, though, he uses a contraption to puff a spurt of air between the spatula and the pie, making it easier for the dough to slide off.
The oven cooks half of the pie at a time. Catalbasoglu knows it’s time to turn the pizza when “the part of the dough that doesn’t have cheese turns to a goldish-yellow,” he said. That usually happens after a couple of minutes. At that point, he switches to a metal spatula and spins the pizza 180 degrees.
When the Napoletana is finished baking, Catalbasoglu retracts it from the oven and tops it with Parmesan cheese. The rest is up to us.