Route One Saugus News – Santarpios Pizza Coming to ROUTE ONE!

Santarpio’s opening delayed by at least a month

By Bella Travaglini

August 2010

The signs are up, renovations are nearly complete and staff will be hired this week, but the long-anticipated opening of Santarpio’s Pizza on the North Shore has been delayed at least a month.

The pizzeria expected to open on Route 1 north in Peabody this week, but delivery of the rotary ovens ordered in March from a St. Louis company has been delayed, said Carla Santarpio, one of the owners of the family restaurant.

“We are going to begin interviewing this Thursday for staff,” said Santarpio, in spite of the delay. “Once the ovens get here, we will be ready to open our doors.” She said at least a month’s delay is expected.

When the ovens are delivered and installed, Santarpio’s will have to go through another round of electrical, fire, gas and building inspections, said Linda Lavoie of the building inspector’s office. Following those inspections, an overall final inspection will need to be completed, she said.

Santarpio’s earlier this year paid $1.7 million for the Bennigan’s building at 71 Newbury St. at the Route 1 north jughandle turnaround during a foreclosure process and $150,000 for an all-alcohol license as part of the deal, said Santarpio.

The Peabody pizzeria will follow the East Boston model, where the family for decades has run a successful Chelsea Street business, and serve three menu items – pizza, lamb and sausage barbeque. Pizza is the only item available to go, said Santarpio.

Renovations are 90 percent complete, and the barbeque pit, which is twice the size of the East Boston restaurant, is installed and ready to go, said Santarpio.

Given the recent delay, Santarpio is reluctant to give a date for the opening.

“I have heard from so many people asking when we are opening,” said Santarpio. “I can’t give a specific date, but let’s just say we’re excited and ready to go once those ovens get here.”

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Santarpio’s World Famous Pizza Coming to Route One Peabody.  It’s OFFICIAL!

Article Courtesy of:  The Boston Herald

Santarpio’s, the next generation

It’s official.

Old school East Boston pizza institution Santarpio’s is expanding after 107 years.

The fourth generation of Santarpio’s plans to open, in Peabody by May, a second location of the perennial “Best of Boston” winner.

Their company won bankruptcy court approval on Wednesday to purchase the former Bennigan’s on Route 1 North for $1.8 million.

The 300-seat restaurant will be twice the size of the original.

Siblings Carla, Joia and Frank Santarpio have wanted to expand for a while.

“My father retired five years ago, and we’ve been planning to do something since then,” Carla Santarpio said.

The family will replicate what’s made them a success in East Boston since 1903 — first as a bakery and then as a pizza joint — and landed them on GQ magazine’s list of the top 25 pizza places in America last year.

“There are four siblings and some cousins, and we’re going to basically do everything,” Santarpio said. “We make our own dough, we cut our own meat and we make our own sausages.”

The company has purchased a liquor license for the Peabody location, but needs city approval.

“I’m excited,” Santarpio said. “We have six kids in our family. They’re all teenagers and they’re coming to work.

The fifth generation is ready.”

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Santarpios Pizza on Route One???  No Way!

There’s an old joke on the North Shore.  It’s the pizza directions joke.

“Hey buddy where do get a good pizza around here?”  Anthony replies:  “Go past the Revere House of Pizza, then pass Domino’s Pizza and take a right at the end of Broadway, when you see the big church on the left take a left, pass Maggio’s and Billy Tse’s and keep going till ya see the water, then ask around for Bianchi’s Pizza.”  The same is true for Everett, Malden, Saugus, Wakefield and Medford.  We all use pizza parlors as landmarks.  Route One has Prince and Polcari’s (Pizzeria Regina) and now Santarpios.

Route One Saugus News has heard that the old Bennigans Peabody Route 1 North Bound location is soon to be pizza lovers heaven.  Santarpios Route One Peabody!

The pizza ovens are on the way!  For pizza lovers all over the North Shore, Boston and the WORLD this is BIG NEWS.

The sometimes hard to find original Santarpios circa 1903 location in East Boston has always needed a suburban location.  What better place than on Route One?!

Put me on the guest list for the first ever Route One Pizza Crawl!  Yum! Last stop Santarpios.  Make mine with onions, a double lamby bamby on the side, extra peppers and a bottle of chantay.

Follow the information trail we found online below, comment and tell us what you think!

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Santarpio’s Pizza May Open a Second Location in Peabody

Courtesy of:  http://bostonrestaurants.blogspot.com/2009/12/santarpios-pizza-may-open-second.html

A classic old-school pizza joint in East Boston might soon have a second location.

According to both The Hubster and Grub Street Boston, Santarpio’s Pizza is looking at possibly moving into the old Bennigan’s spot on Route 1 in Peabody (the Bennigan’s in Peabody closed last year after the chain filed for bankruptcy). The Hubster states that if all goes as planned, the new Santarpio’s might open by March of 2010, though Grub Street Boston mentions that the new Peabody location won’t be a sure thing until the middle of December.

Santarpio’s first opened as a bakery in East Boston more than a hundred years ago, with the pizzeria opening in the 1930s. The Chelsea Street restaurant and bar has become a local institution over the years, and is considered by many to have the best pizza in the Greater Boston area. In addition to pizza, Santarpio’s also offers sausage and lamb skewers, as well as beer and wine.

For more information on the possible opening of a second Santarpio’s in Peabody, please go to The Hubster and Grub Street Boston links below.

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Santarpio’s North?

Courtesy of:  http://www.blogcatalog.com/search.frame.php?term=bennigan\%27s&id=15ce350644250f8365b455770ec378d5

Until now, the legendary Santarpio’s name has been safeguarded: no other locations and no retail products.

It seems, however, that the family has purchased the site of the former Bennigan’s on Route 1 in Peabody and they intend to call the new place Santarpio’s.

After renovations, the eatery is scheduled to open in March. It’s unclear so far how similar the menu will be to the landmark East Boston restaurant.

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Eastie stalwart Santarpio’s Pizza is eyeing a second location in Peabody, reports The Hubster. The second outpost would open in the former Bennigan’s on Route 1.

Santarpio’s Lenny Timpone tells us that the opening won’t be definite until mid-December, so suburban pizza, sausage, and lamb enthusiasts should keep their fingers crossed until then.

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Frank Santarpio, a fourth generation pizza chef, removes an extra cheese and pepperoni pizza from the oven at Santarpio’s Pizza. (Wiqan Ang)

Putting toppings at bottom adds to flavor of Santarpio’s

By Jonathan Levitt, Globe Correspondent

Article Courtesy of:  The Boston Globe

Santarpio’s customers settle into the blue vinyl booths and feast on barbecue and pizza — thin and crisp and served on battered metal trays — every day, from noon to midnight. You can hear hoarse laughter from the regulars at the bar, some couples hum to Jimmy Roselli records on the jukebox, and neighborhood cops come in through the back door to pick up a few pies to go. The lights are dim, the ceilings low, and the walls covered with autographed photographs and classic fight posters.

The East Boston pizza house opened for business in 1903. Three Santarpio brothers came from Naples and began with a bread bakery. “They cooked for princes in Italy and had about a dozen kids each,” says Lennie Timpone, 61, whose mother was a Santarpio, and who has worked here all his life.

These days fourth – generation sisters Carla Santarpio, 40, and Joia Santarpio, 33, and their 41-year old brother, Frank, run the place. Their dad, Frank Santarpio, and their older brother, Joseph Santarpio, retired two years ago and the younger siblings took over. “Joia is my godchild,” says Timpone. “Now she’s my boss.”

The menu is simple: pizza, bread, and barbecue. Most days the sisters work the pizza oven, wait tables, and take phone orders. Frank goes back and forth between the bar and the oven, and Timpone bartends and sees to the back room butcher shop. He brews big pots of Maxwell House, rests his wristwatch and glasses on the meat grinder, switches on his little radio (“This time of year it’s just Christmas songs,” he says), and then spends hours breaking down pork butts and lamb forequarters for the barbecue skewers.

Every morning for 30 years, baker Glenn Carlton has baked the bread and mixed the pizza dough. The sisters come in around 9 and take over. “The dough is easy, it’s just flour, water, yeast, and salt,” says Carla. On a typical day they make up to 300 pies. For every pizza they pull a floppy ball of dough out of the proofer, press it down flat on the counter and stretch it hand over hand over hand until it’s thin and round.

“Throwing the dough up in the air would just be all for show,” says Carla.

They lay the discs of stretched dough, two at a time, on a wooden peel dusted with coarse cornmeal. They sprinkle on the toppings first, then the cheese (3 types of mozzarella mixed together) and finally the sauce.

“Most places do the exact opposite, but we think the toppings cook better on the bottom,” says Carla. The sauce is just crushed tomatoes — “They’re the good ones, the same tomatoes that we put in the gravy at our Sunday night dinners at home,” says Carla — and dried herbs reduced together for a few hours over a low flame.

Timpone says that people are always asking him for the sauce’s secret ingredient. “When I tell them how simple it is , they think I’m lying,” he says.

To finish, the pies get a drizzle of olive oil from an old Smirnoff Vodka bottle, then about 10 minutes in the 550-degree oven. Santarpio’s had a brick pizza oven but got rid of it about 50 years ago. They’re now on their second gas- powered Reed revolving tray oven from Kansas City. It has five shelves and can hold 40 pizzas at a time. “It’s as hot as we need it to be, and I cook pizza just the way I like them — nice and crunchy,” says Joia.

During the day, the women take turns working the pizza station, then hand it over to various long time bakers.

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Whenever he has a chance, Timpone likes to get in front of the oven. “You never forget how to do it,” he says. “I’ve been doing this since I was a little boy.”

The neighborhood has changed a lot over the past few decades. “I remember when the whole area here used to be all coldwater flats and all the old ladies would get big blocks of ice delivered in sawdust,” says Timpone. “Now the neighborhood people are gone, those days are gone. We’re still crazy busy on the weekends and holidays but during the week it’s quieter than it was in the old days.”

Joia studied fashion design at Mount Ida College and Carla has a business degree from Suffolk University. Neither sister intended to work at Santarpio’s full time. “My father never wanted this for us,” says Joia. “It started as a summer job and something to do on the weekends, but that was 15 years ago. I’d be a fool to leave though. I make my own hours and I see my family every day. We’re all like family here. If someone has a baby it’s a big deal. If some one gets sick it’s a big deal. I know most people don’t have that at work. This place feels like home to us. It’s what we know.”

Santarpio’s, 113 Chelsea St., East Boston, 617-567-9871, santarpiospizza.com.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.