The restaurant business is never easy, but a burger joint or a pizza parlor are two of the safer alternatives.
The latter was a natural for Jim Zimmerman, the former president of the eastern region of Cahokia Flour Co, where he oversaw distribution 16 in states to clients like Schnucks, Imo’s Pizza, and Panera Bread. (His family sold the company in 1998.) Start talking flour to Zimmerman and you might want to cancel all calls for the next hour or so. Treated vs. untreated, bleached vs. unbleached, bromated vs. unbromated, aged vs. unaged. It’s dizzying, it’s an education, and you just know that if this guy’s tinkering with flour, the results are apt to be good. And they are. Very good. At Pizzino, named after one of Zimmerman’s favorite pizza joints in Italy.
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We first caught up with Zimmerman in the fall, just after he’d taken over the only Missouri location of the Newport Beach-based zpizza, at 7600 Wydown in Clayton. (The address is deceiving: the 25-seat pizzeria faces Westwood Dr., just off of Wydown. Saying it’s “just east of Protzel’s and around the corner” leads you right to the door.)
It’s a bright little spot, made more so by a series of beach photos taken in Forte dei Marmi, a resort city in northern Italy, not far from Zimmerman’s wife’s childhood home. Many of the pizzas (Royal, Bruno, ) take their names from Italian beaches.
Open only six weeks, Pizzino is dine-in or take-out only. Zimmerman assures us delivery will be an option by springtime.
Zimmerman had been a home pizza cook for years. Then, in 2009, he became more serious, enrolling in the culinary program at STLCC-Forest Park where he picked up operational knowledge along with practical skills.
The result is a small, but well-researched menu of two styles of pizza, a homemade soup and sandwich of the day, and his wife Vicky’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. All are excellent. As is what may be one of the more addictive snacks in town: a $3 bag of fried, spiced nuts (pecan and walnut halves) and broken candy brittle. “One offsets the other,” Zimmerman said. “You have to eat both, together” (Zimmerman created the snack at home, making it only for the holidays. We can only hope that our over-the-top enthusiasm will result in their permanent placement.)
The most popular pizza was the single-serve oval (“the shape it always seemed to come out at home—they rarely end up in circles,” Zimmerman admitted). The crust is made from “a fine but not quite 00 flour,” dosed with a bit of cornmeal and a little whole wheat. In a departure from the ordinary, the crust is first grilled, then topped and finished in a 650 degree brick oven. When asked to describe the crust, Zimmerman answered as we thought he might: “tender because of the open cell structure, but with a crispy bottom, due to the two stages of cooking.”
When asked about his choice of oven, Zimmerman said, “it’s from Marsal & Sons, one of the premier US oven makers,” and then added sheepishly, “plus, it’s the oven that was already here.”
The toppings are all better-quality (we’re tired of the word “gourmet” as well). Cured meats from Salume Beddu, and pizza-oven-cooked vegetables—like roasted and spiced tomatoes.
The other pizza style is focaccia-based, cooked in a half-sheet pan, available by the pan or by the slice, and while not a fan of pan-based pizzas, this may just be the lightest focaccia in town, so we wolfed a full slice because we couldn’t stop.
Ask Zimmerman about that focaccia, and be prepared for an extended answer—about aging, and starters, and hydration (from milk and oil), and working the dough by hand… We should know. We’re still here.
7600 Wydown
314-240-5134
Mon-Sat: 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
