Just signed a specialty Pizza place for 3131 Olive next door to the Urban Tan! He has ordered his brick oven from Italy and will begin the finish work in two weeks, I expect an opening May 1st!
Excellent! That stretch of Olive already has a much different (better) feel to it, and I look forward to seeing more development. Is it a little too close to Vito's though, or is there room for more than one pizza joint?
Vito's isn't just pizza, and I wouldn't call it "specialty" pizza either. It's more of an Italian place that happens to deliver pizzas to the university.
Great news, but I am continually surprised that people would rather locate along Olive (not pedestrian friendly) rather than one block north on Locust (very pedestrian friendly). Seems counterintuitive to me. Locust has such a cozy, walled in, main street feel. That stretch of Olive feels like an interstate in comparison. Oh well, what is the name of the Pizza place? Chain? Local? New? Website?
The place is NEW,not a chain with local ownership. I don't know the name or any other details at this point but will post once i do.
we are working with Marlene Davis and the city to change the streetscape and make Olive more ped friendly,we are aslo branding the area to reflect ALL the changes going on..a public announcement should happen in the nexy 90-120 days..
I have heard a median is planned for Olive; I just posted about the need for (good) medians in the city on my blog (see in signature below if interested). New Orleans has such amazing medians that invite joggers, pedestrians, tourists, and horticulturalists alike. Plus, cars must slow down and a nice tree canopy makes walking and driving more pleasant. It's a win-win.
Olive definitely needs it, as do other interstate-streets such as Kingshighway and Natural Bridge.
Matt Drops The H wrote:I have heard a median is planned for Olive; I just posted about the need for (good) medians in the city on my blog (see in signature below if interested). New Orleans has such amazing medians that invite joggers, pedestrians, tourists, and horticulturalists alike. Plus, cars must slow down and a nice tree canopy makes walking and driving more pleasant. It's a win-win.
So what would be the best solution for Olive? A cement median that would give pedestrians a place to stand while crossing the street, or something more decorative, with trees, shrubs, statuary, etc.?
to me a "median" is just concrete. But a real New Orleans style "neutral ground" means there is green space, maybe a path for walkers and joggers. I'd like to see more of the latter--when feasible
Matt Drops The H wrote:I have heard a median is planned for Olive; I just posted about the need for (good) medians in the city on my blog (see in signature below if interested). New Orleans has such amazing medians that invite joggers, pedestrians, tourists, and horticulturalists alike. Plus, cars must slow down and a nice tree canopy makes walking and driving more pleasant. It's a win-win.
So what would be the best solution for Olive? A cement median that would give pedestrians a place to stand while crossing the street, or something more decorative, with trees, shrubs, statuary, etc.?
I would click the link to my blog and check out the picture of Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans. It's wider than Olive if you include the center median, but the Olive iteration could be the same layout: where the median consumes all but one traffic lane and one parking lane in each direction.
Remember folks, congestion is a good thing for urban commercial strips!
As far as the aesthetics of the greenway, again look at Jeff Davis. It should be planted with its own walking path and maybe even move the Bike St. Louis trail to the center as well.
It tends to be that in most "up and coming" areas, restaurants come first. I think this is a great start. Once people start feeling comfortable with the area more retail will fill in and maybe some infill on the empty lots along Olive.
From someone about to open a place in the area in a few day though, welcome... the more places to eat down here, the better. It helps create a critical mass of dining establishments. Just yesterday as we were working on The U someone was just standing at the front saying "Buffalo or Pappy's?" Its pretty exciting to be down here at the beginning of all of this.
I hope they make Neapolitan style pizza where the pizza gets blasted for about three minutes at around 900 degrees. That's what we need.
As Steingarten wrote:
There are two perfect pizzas. One is Neapolitan. Pizza was not invented in Naples nor, probably, in Italy. But around 1760, when tomatoes replaced lard and garlic as the principal pizza condiment, Naples - both the nobility and the poor - went mad for this ancient flatbread, and devised the greatest pizza in the world. It is about 10in in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick, with a narrow, charred, puffy, sauceless rim, crisp but tender and light; it is made with about seven ounces of dough prepared with soft flour; and it is most often topped, very lightly, with tomatoes, garlic, oregano and olive oil (this is the pizza marinara) or with tomatoes, olive oil, mozzarella and a leaf or two of basil (this is the pizza Margherita, named in 1889 for the visiting queen of Italy, and notable for the red, white and green of the Italian flag). The mozzarella is usually made from cow's milk, sometimes from water buffalo's milk. In Naples, pizza toppings are not cooked in advance - only by the heat of the pizza oven.
Our oven should be arriving in the next few weeks and we hope to open our doors late summer. The Good Pie, will serve authentic neapolitan pizza made with an oven and mixer custom built in italy for us. Local beers..all tap...and italian wines as well as simple seasonal salads, meat, cheese and contorni.
Our guiding philosophy is to limit our impact on the environment through the use of sustainable local produce, recycling programs, composting kitchen scraps and maintaining over 100 square feet of fully sustainable organic vegetable gardens in our back courtyard.
I can't wait to be through with the build up and to get the doors open and show St Louis pizza in its most pure form, looking forward to becoming part of the neighborhood,
actually close but more like 60-90 seconds at 1000ish, neapolitan ovens are built with a much lower refractory ceiling than other woodburning ovens,
at peak service the oven will be around 1000, sidenote...because these ovens are built to contain and maintain heat and high temperatures they burn less wood then higher domed ovens
the garden from which veggies will come is built behind the building, I can say this is a much anticipated opening as many people have asked when ..when will they open..
I'll ask the good pie to post the expected opening date.. I'm sure Mr.Bonwich will be watching!
I was a bit optimistic in my last post the oven was caught up in customs! BUT it's now finally on the way. most everything else is just about completed so I'd expect a GRAND opening in about 3 weeks.
the place will be named " A GOOD PIE " if you didn't catch an earlier post.
the oven was caught up in customs! BUT it's now finally on the way. most everything else is just about completed so I'd expect a GRAND opening in about 3 weeks.
