You can take the pizzaiolo out of the cart…
Save for a little dishwashing and food-running help on busy Fridays, Craig Melillo has worked the register and wood-fired oven at Gracie’s Apizza, his St. Johns micro restaurant, mostly by himself since the earliest days of COVID. But instead of burning out, the one-man business model — a throwback to his cart days — has unlocked something unique, he thinks.
“You can get good pizza all over Portland, but here in this weird little space, in this weird little neighborhood, there’s just this weird crazy guy who does all this stuff by himself,” Melillo says. “The person who owns the restaurant works there, makes the pizzas, serves the pizzas, talks to you. Does that mean that sometimes you have an hour wait? Yes, but it’s also what makes it special.”
Don’t expect that to change later this year, when Melillo moves his cult-favorite pizzeria three blocks east to the former St. Johns Coffee Roasters, where he will be joined by North Portland-based bread delivery service Starter Bread. Save for a few friends and a part-time employee or two, Melillo plans to run the entire operation himself, walking over from his nearby home to mix dough each morning, then returning to prep, take orders, cook pizzas and run food from 5 to 8 p.m., Wednesday-Saturday.
Melillo has taken an incremental approach to growing his pizzeria. Gracie’s Apizza started as a wood-fired pizza truck in 2018, the same year it was named one of Portland’s best new food carts. In 2019, he took over the former 24th and Meatballs location at 8737 N. Lombardi in St. Johns, ordering the fastest oven he could fit into the tiny kitchen and opening two months after signing the lease.
“I was so limited by space size, it was a bummer,” Melillo says. “Now I have the tiniest oven in the world on the truck, and the smallest oven possible in the restaurant.”
Gracie's Apizza will leave its original location, 8737 N Lombard St., later this year.Mark Graves
Earlier this year, Starter Bread owners Zena Walas and Matt Kedzie, who were already planning to take over part of the former coffee roastery and cafe, approached Melillo with the idea of taking over the rest, he says. He balked at first, but the more he thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Beyond having room to install a larger oven — and a walk-in refrigerator, and a marble prep counter — the corner building had something else going for it.
“I walked in and was like, ‘Oh man, there’s natural light!’ The whole space is totally open. Ordering will be two steps to the right of where I’ll be making pizza in a copper-plated oven with the oven mouth facing the window. It’s going to be beautiful and timeless.”
Despite Melillo’s best efforts, some things will invariably change. The stone floor of his new Forni Modena oven is roughly 16 inches wider than the old one, offering more real estate for baking pies. Good, since the new space will have 22 seats indoors, plus another 10 outside. And after stirring his dough by hand for four years, Melillo recently bought a mixer, allowing him to make a more consistent product — and add more rye starter — without gumming up the works.
But he still plans to make around 70 pies a day, sell them until they’re gone, and hopes to continue working fewer than 35 hours a week, as he does now.
When he shifts operations to the new location in November, scratch-made pasta pop-up Pastificio D’Oro will take over the Gracie’s space full time, likely flipping from its current Sunday-Tuesday to more weekend-friendly hours.
Talking with Melillo means frequent digressions into the finer points of pizza making. The way a pungent, pricy mozzarella might lose its character during the bake, diminishing its value. How Pecorino Romano looks pretty snowed over a tomato pie with a microplane, but a coarser grind helps it retain a pleasantly salty chew. Whether to lend credence to the idea that a three-day ferment in the fridge is better for your biome than a same-day dough allowed to fully proof at room temperature. The importance of using minimal binding in meatballs.
He says he thought about buying an electric oven for the new shop, going so far as to place a deposit on a Pizza Master — the same oven now used at Apizza Scholls and Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, among other top pizzerias. But moving away from wood fire would take away some of the magic..
“Matt at Starter Bread was very pro Pizza Master,” Melillo says. “Then he came by to hang out and bake some pizzas one day, and he just looked up at me and said, ‘Is this going to be as fun? Sliding pizzas in and out of an electric oven?’ If anything makes food art, it’s not the product, it’s the cooking. That is the thing that is magical. And I want to do this for a very long time. I’m interested in mastery. I want to see what I’m like in 25 years. I needed a forever space.”
Gracie’s Apizza will remain in its current Lombard Street home until November, when Melillo hopes to be ready to move in alongside Starter Bread in the former St. Johns Coffee Roasters space, 7304 N. Leavitt Ave.
Read more:
Portland’s best new food carts of 2018
Gracie’s Apizza makes wood-fired pizza -- and the city’s best calzone -- in North Portland
22 new Portland restaurants to know for summer 2022
— Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com @tdmrussell