The first thing Barry Wohl will tell you is that his pizza place is anything but typical.
"We're going to be nothing like your average pizza place," said Wohl, owner of the soon-to-be-opened Pizza Grille of Providence. "We are looking to attract customers interested in tasting America's gourmet pizza."
Wohl and partner Peter LoCascio are preparing to open the first of what they hope to be many Pizza Grilles in Providence. The new restaurant, which is located next to Ben and Jerry's on Meeting Street, will open Sept. 22, bringing to the Thayer Street area an alternative pizza parlor that features grilled pizza.
"Pizza is something that has always sold well in the United States," said Wohl. "We decided to make a spin on the traditional pizza and make it into a grilled product."
The Pizza Grille differs from most traditional pizza places in that it grills its pizzas on an open-pit grill instead of baking them. At Wohl's restaurant, a thin piece of pizza dough is grilled on both sides, the shell is then brought to a side table where toppings are added, and the pizza is finished under a broiler.
"The key is that we never re-warm the pizza. ... Everything is made fresh to order," Wohl added.
Wohl said that while grilled pizza is not a new idea, his restaurant is making the style much more available to the general public.
"Grilled pizza has been around for a while. What we're doing is taking a high-end product and taking it to the fast food industry, allowing us to bring it out at a reasonable price," Wohl said.
Wohl also made several other important distinctions between pizzas from the Pizza Grille and traditional pizza places, saying that his pizzas are fresher, healthier and lighter. He said the restaurant's pizzas have half the carbohydrates of traditional pizzas. He also emphasized that the Pizza Grille bakes its own dough, which differs from traditional pizza dough.
"Customers have described it as an extremely crispy dough on the outside with a soft, chewy interior," Wohl said.
The Pizza Grille does not sell pizza by the slice - it instead sells individual-sized half and whole pies.
Besides selling pizza, the Pizza Grille also offers grilled panini and wraps, which use the same grilled flatbread that is used on the pizzas.
Wohl's partner LoCascio originally came up with the concept for the restaurant one and a half years ago and has been working on it ever since. Providence is the first site of the Pizza Grille, and Wohl said the expansion of the restaurant depends on the success of the Providence prototype.
Wohl said that the first immediate expansions of the restaurant will be in Newport and Warwick, with Wohl targeting a Jan. 1, 2005, opening date for both sites. Wohl said that if the Providence Pizza Grille proves successful, he and LoCascio will launch new sites around the United States, in Canada and in the United Kingdom.
Located on 235 Meeting St., just off Thayer Street, the restaurant is in a small, quaint white house that was formerly occupied by the Garment District, a discount clothing store chain whose Meeting Street location closed in November 2003. Inside the restaurant is a cozy room with warm yellow walls and an open kitchen where customers can watch the chefs cook their orders. Customers can eat their food at one of the counters inside the restaurant or at a table on an outdoor patio behind the restaurant. Wohl said that the restaurant holds about 30 people, while an additional 40 people can eat on the patio.
While the Pizza Grille will not open for another week, the restaurant was open from Sept. 2 to Sept. 9 to have customers test its products and give feedback to the management. According to store manager Anna Phrasathane, the feedback has been phenomenal.
"There were no negative comments," Phrasathane said. "The customers described the pizzas as tasty, flavorful, crunchy and something they've never had before."
"We've had a number of adults, graduate students and high school students from the Wheeler School comment that they had never tasted such a fresh, high quality pizza," she said.
Around the corner from the Pizza Grille is Antonio's Pizza, and although the latter is often very crowded during the lunch, dinner and late-night hours, Wohl denied any competition between the two restaurants.
"We don't feel that we are in competition with Antonio's," he said. "We feel that we are offering a fresh, high-quality product and that our consumers will become loyal in looking for just that."
Likewise, the staff at Antonio's does not anticipate that the opening of the Pizza Grille will lead to a battle for customers.
"We really don't pay too much attention to the other guys," said Ed Ramos, manager of Antonio's. "We're just going to go on, business as usual."
