Cobblestones Wood Fired Pizza

Cobblestones offers the best in wood fired pizza using fresh ingredients.

In 1979 I opened my first restaurant in Cranston, RI called Olerio's, where I used all of my family recipes. My Grandmother was born in Italy and immigrated to the U.S. in 1916. She was an incredible cook who had been doing farm-to-table cooking way back then before it was in vogue. In 1917, she married my grandfather, and together they moved to a farm in Milford, MA. All of the food they prepared came straight from the farm. They would use fresh produce and meats available during the growing season. In the winter, they would live off of the meats and vegetables they preserved in the Fall. It was through this experience that allowed my mom to master hundreds of recipes from her mother and grandmother which had been brought over from their piase in Italy! She also perfected all the same skills which included cooking, preserving and baking bread. Three generations under one roof enjoyed the sights, aromas and tastes of this farm to table experience!

It was growing up in my grandmothers kitchen where I fell in love with Italian Food. Specifically, all the preparation and care that went into each and every meal. I would help my Great Grandmother shell bushel baskets of beans, peel the skin off of par boiled tomatoes before they were preserved and help with kneading the dough for bread and homemade pasta, usually Gniochis or cavatellis. In the fall we would roast and pickle bushels of peppers and I would watch my Grandfather as he made homemade sausage and cured Italian Hams and prosciuto. All of this wonderful food was stored in their Cantina down in the basement. From all of these delicious foods my Great Grandmother, my Grandmother and Mother would prepare all sorts of Italian delicacies such as stuffed peppers, eggplant parmesan, chicken cacciatore, homemade pasta with meatballs.

A typical sunday dinner would consist of a big salad, along with roasted peppers, pickled peppers, marinated eggplant, assorted cheeses and cured meats. After all of this came the pasta. At night, all the grandchildren would gather in my grandparent’s backyard where my grandmother would cook up the best pizza I ever tasted in my life. She prepared it in a makeshift wood fired brick oven that my grandfather built. This oven, in addition to the vegetable beds in the yard, was lined with cobblestones. After the pizza was cooked, if the weather permitted, we would sit outside under a big pergola covered with grape vines and enjoy the feast. My Grandmother’s pizza made a name for itself, which became apparent when the neighbors began to come and pick up the pizza from the side door of the house! It is the memory of that experience that I decided to use to model my restaurant called Cobblestones Wood Fired Pizza. In addition to being inspired by the food, I also derived the name for my restaurant from my Sunday visits. It is this experience that I am trying to recreate at my restaurant. I want to serve the old style Italian pizza cooked in a brick oven on a stone hearth fired by just wood and have my customers feel like they are sitting under my Grandfather's pergola in his backyard 50 years ago.