Jalisco Pizza opened in the former Stef’s Pizza space (3831 Elm, St. Charles), in a strip mall near New Town, earlier this month.
Owner Leonardo Ortiz has combined flavors of his home state in Mexico with a traditional Italian pizzeria to offer a new dining experience in St. Charles. As Ortiz says, “The colors of our flags are the same.”
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The Menu
The namesake Jalisco Pizza is topped with slow-cooked beef (birria), chopped cilantro, and onion. It’s served with a consome dipping sauce—a combination that packs a flavorful punch. Ortiz calls the creation “an experiment, a great mistake,” he says. “I make a batch with 150 pounds of beef. It’s soft, tender, and has a great flavor.” The restaurant also offers versions made with street steak and al pastor, with marinated pork.
The Mexican specialties come with four homemade sauces: chimichurri, chipotle salsa, salsa verde, and the Diabla sauce.
Those who prefer a traditional pizza can create their own or order an array of specialty options—deluxe, meat lover, combo, or veggie—on a 10-or 14-inch pizza. (Among the popular build-your-own options: ham, pineapple, and pickled jalapeño peppers.)
Other options include submarine sandwiches, calzones, and pasta (spaghetti and meatballs, chicken alfredo, and lasagna). Among the appetizers: toasted ravioli, mozzarella sticks, chicken wings, meatballs, and garlic rolls. A sweet fruit salad is composed of romaine lettuce, cantaloupe, strawberries, peach, kiwi, apple, and nuts in a creamy strawberry-yogurt dressing, while the Jalisco salad is an Italian-style chef salad with meat and cheese.
Desserts include cinnamon rolls, sopapilla with ice cream, and fried ice cream. (Ortiz uses cinnamon bark to make his own proprietary blend of cinnamon sugar seasoning.)
The Background
Before opening Jalisco Pizza, the 26-year-old Ortiz worked as a manager and server at other restaurants, where he picked up new cooking skills. “Rene Garcia of La Rocca’s Pizza in Topeka, Kansas, taught me how to make dough,” says Ortiz. “He has a passion for everything he does. That’s how I learned.”
At Jalisco Pizza, he’s also “using old and new family recipes,” he says. “My dad taught me to cook. He said you have to know what you are doing with a recipe… I wanted to stay as authentic as possible.”
In the future, Ortiz would like to expand and hopes to offer delivery within a 10-mile radius, including to New Town. “I always said if I opened a restaurant, I wanted everyone from little kids to seniors to enjoy eating at it,” he says.
