{Blues City Deli owner Vince Valenza}
Aporkalypse pizza? Dreams could come true this summer when Blues City Deli owner Vince Valenza opens Melo’s Pizza behind his popular Benton Park sandwich shop at 2438 McNair Ave.
Valenza announced the new wood-fired pizzeria yesterday, Feb. 4. “We think it’s just a really great corner and doing this will cause more excitement,” he said. “It will be a nice mix with what the deli has.”
After taking ownership of the building in December 2013, Valenza began pondering what to do with the garage behind the shop. When his son, Joey Valenza, began experimenting with pizzas in his spare time, his father saw an opportunity. Melo’s, which is named for Vince Valenza’s father, will serve wood-fired pizzas from the renovated garage, soon to be outfitted with a pizza oven imported from Naples. “We’re going to throw our own little twist,” he said. “With respect to the Neapolitan approach to dough, that’s what we’ll use … We’ll do our own Blues City Deli accents.”
Melo’s will have separate ordering and pickup lines, but customers can mingle over sandwiches and slices on the shared patio. Valenza said that the pizzeria’s initial hours would be the same as the deli, including staying open late Thursday evenings, with the possibility of extended hours Friday and Saturday.
Now about that Aporkalypse pizza… “I would not be surprised if we didn’t do something like that,” Valenza said.
-photo by Brian Fagnani
This article appears in February 2015.