Rizzuto’s Wood-Fired Pizza Kitchen—

Restaurateur Is Fired Up About His Pizza Kitchen

By Kaaren Valenta

When Bill Rizzuto decided to open a restaurant in Bethel, he knew he wanted it to be remarkably different than the many other Italian restaurants in northern Fairfield County. He envisioned an exhibition kitchen with wood-fired open-hearth ovens, a wood-fired grill, rotisserie grills, and a menu that marries the freshest ingredients with the most authentic cooking methods.

The result was Rizzuto’s Wood-Fired Pizza Kitchen, the new restaurant at 6 Stony Hill in Bethel, across from Target. Mr Rizzuto, a former hotelier with Hyatt and other hotel/resort facilities throughout the country, combined Italian flavors with wood, stone, and fire to create a wood-fired pizza kitchen.

Open less than two months, the restaurant already is a popular gathering place, an environment that is Fairfield County with a dash of San Francisco.

“This is an Italian restaurant but there is a bit of California in what we do,” Mr Rizzuto said. “I call it country-style Italian with a little California on top.

“We have a box behind the restaurant that holds two and a half cords of wood,” Mr Rizzuto said. “I was chopping wood for kindling the other morning and it was so cold, I couldn’t feel my hands.”

Getting the 6,000-pound pizza oven into the restaurant was quite a feat. “We had to remove the storefront,” Mr Rizzuto said. “It is the Rolls Royce of wood stoves, made in Washington State about 30 miles south of the Canadian border.”

Bill Rizzuto was living in San Francisco when he flew up to Washington to spend a day working with the oven in the company’s test kitchen. He had been working for the Hyatt in California, but wanted to come back to Connecticut and realize his dream of opening his own restaurant.

“The two things I love best are people and food,” he said. “I’d been in the hotel business for more than 20 years. I graduated from New York University and started my career as beverage manager in the New York Hilton.”

His background includes the modification of eight restaurants at Bally’s Casino Resort in Las Vegas, as well as creating six restaurants for the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel at Epcot Center, including Harry’s Safari Bar and Grille, Ristorante Carnivale (with singing waiters), and the Copa Banana nightclub.

After joining Hyatt, he was the regional director of food and beverage for Hyatt’s northeast division, overseeing 25 hotels from Washington, D.C., to Boston from an office in the Grand Hyatt in New York City and then spearheading the renovation of the Hyatt Regency Greenwich, where he was general manager.

He lived with his family — wife Kathleen, daughter Lindsay, 13, and son Avery, 11 — in West Chester County, then moved to Bethel in 1997. In 2001, they moved to San Francisco.

“We were living in what amounted to a 2,300-square-foot ranch-style home on the sixth floor of the 800-room Hyatt, overlooking San Francisco Bay,” he said. “Finally we decided we wanted to come back to reality. While we were still in California, I started looking for a location here to open a restaurant. Being in business for myself has been my dream, but we gave it careful consideration from a personal standpoint and a family standpoint. My family loves this area. Everything worked. We moved back in July and bought a house in Bethel.”

He started the restaurant construction in September and opened on December 10.

“I’ve had this concept in mind for over ten years,” he said. “I’ve been intrigued by cooking with wood after I saw it in Las Vegas and California. For me it is all about authenticity and lighter ways of cooking.

“We use only fresh ingredients on our pizzas. We make the dough fresh every day. There is no oil or fat of any type in our pizza dough. We use the highest protein flour with semolina in it, plus yeast, water, and salt. We let the dough rise under refrigeration to help the gluten develop. Heat and air is the enemy of dough.”

The dough is stored in wooden dough boxes, rather than in the typical plastic boxes used in most restaurants.

“Every dough will sweat,” he explained. “Wood absorbs. The dough won’t sit in water like it does in plastic dough boxes.”

Pizza sauces are made fresh, not ahead, so they cook on the pizza. All ingredients are prepared in the restaurant: mushrooms are cooked on the grill, red and green peppers are julienned, coated with olive oil; onions are caramelized on a sheet pan in the wood-fired oven.

“We take steps that make it more labor intensive and costly, but that makes the difference in the taste and quality,” he said.

Besides wood-fired pizzas, the menu includes lunch and dinner salads ($6.95–$9.95); roasted, grilled, and flamed rotisserie chicken, wild salmon, and rib-eye steak; veal scallopine, pasta specialties, and other entrees ($7–$16.50). There are “calwiches,” California-style sandwiches prepared calzone style and served hot from the oven with a pasta salad ($6.95–$7.25). Appetizers ($2.95–$8.50) include such choices as soups, antipasto, roasted garlic shrimp, roasted breads with toppings, and pork rolls (crusty rolls filled with oven roasted pork and romano cheese). 

The entire menu is available for takeout, with delivery available in a five-mile radius to Bethel, Newtown, Brookfield, and Danbury. “About 40 percent of our business is takeout,” Mr Rizzuto said.

There are special takeout/delivery items that range from a whole rotisserie chicken ($9.95) to a family feast (chicken, three side dishes, and garlic bread), $19.95, and a feast for six or more (two chickens, four sides, and garlic bread) $29.95, or a “have it all feast” that includes a large one-topping pizza, a rotisserie chicken, two sides, and garlic bread, $24.95.

The relaxing dining environment inside the restaurant features an open-air kitchen that allows the diners to observe the chefs at work. Mr Rizzuto has taken special care to create a neighborhood oasis that is attractive to families, couples, and the surround corporate community. Beautiful stonework, eclectic lighting, and comfortable furnishings are accented with framed black and white photographs.

Rizzuto’s is open seven days a week: Monday through Thursday from 11:30 to 9:30; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 to 10; and Sunday, noon to 7. Major credit cards are accepted. No reservations needed. Beer and wine are available. For orders call 790-4444, or fax 790-4010. View Rizzuto’s on the Internet at www.Rizzutos.com.