MANCHESTER — Connecticut State Rep. Patricia Dillon (D-New Haven) and State Senator Gary Winfield (D-New Haven) recently proposed adding pizza as the state food, and though New Haven pizza is a popular style of pie, at Joey Garlic’s at 31 Redstone Road, they’re trying out a totally different kind of pizza, the Detroit pizza.
The Motor City style pizza, according to Joey Garlic’s manager Roy Boutwell, has a little thicker crust, but not as thick as a Chicago-style deep dish, and it has white cheddar cheese baked in around the crust in a rectangular pan.
“They all sell well,” Boutwell said. “It’s really ramping up.”
He said that Joey Garlic’s started making Detroit pizza just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which shut down restaurants and businesses across the country.
That hasn’t stopped Boutwell, along with owners Gary Gello and Anthony Sullo, from going forward with even more pizza ideas.
“We’re also coming out with a Grandma pie, which is a bigger square pizza,” Boutwell said.
He said that the Grandma pizza takes two days to prep, but once the dough is ready and the customer orders it, it takes about the same time to cook as any other pizza.
Along with pizza, Joey Garlic’s specializes in a variety of classic Italian dishes.
“We have all the traditional pastas, the alfredos, the scampis, the lasagnas,” Boutwell said. “We also offer grinders.”
Some of the more popular dishes include the Bolognese, the chicken parmesan, salmon, chicken marsala, and the penne a la vodka.
“I’ve heard is the best in town,” Boutwell said of the penne a la vodka.
He said another popular dish is the Crazy Alfredo.
“It’s got everything in it, chicken, pepperoni, sausage, it’s a little spicy. It’s good,” he said.
There are three Joey Garlic’s, including locations in Newington and West Hartford.
The Manchester restaurant opened about two years ago, Boutwell said, after the previous restaurant, Carrabba’s, closed.
Located in a large plaza next to the Cinemark Buckland Hills 18 and IMAX movie theater, much of the business was dependent upon how well the movie theater was doing.
Pre-pandemic, Boutwell said, Joey Garlic’s could sit 1,500 to 2,000 customers a day.
“It depended on the movie,” he said. “If it was a blockbuster, we were going to be busy for a few days.”
Everything changed when the pandemic hit, he said.
“We couldn’t seat inside,” he said. “All we could do was take out and delivery. We focused on that.”
After trying their own delivery service and having difficulties with labor management, Boutsell said they opted to work with delivery services like GrubHub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats.
“It’s helped with the sales,” he said. “It’s another avenue to go down.”
Boutwell said that he and the owners have attempted to work with the movie theater to try and do some sort of outdoor event that would be mutually beneficial.
“They’re limited as well,” he said. “We tried to get a hold of them when COVID first started to suggest doing an outdoor theater, and we’ll serve pizza and grinders and whatever. It’s a big company out of Illinois or somewhere and we never heard back from them.”
With vaccines on the way and the possibility of the state and country reopening, there is hope that businesses will return to normal, but Boutwell said he has no idea how to predict and prepare for when that will happen.
“How do you do it?” he asked. “When do you know? You can only keep so much staff at a certain time. You can’t just have them on reserve and pay them. It’s going to be tough. We’ll have to react quickly. With the job market the way it is, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue to get people in. People want to work. What we have now, they want more hours. I don’t think getting the staff is going to be an issue, it’s getting the staff and getting them trained.”
February 11, 2021 at 10:30PM
https://ift.tt/3rKF15u
Joey Garlic's scores with new style of pizza: The Detroit pie is giving New Haven a run for its money - Journal Inquirer
https://ift.tt/2CPpHAw
Pie
No comments:
Post a Comment