Chicano Boy owner Justin Hershey opening brick oven pizza restaurant in Staunton

STAUNTON — Before opening Chicano Boy Taco, Justin Hershey had developed a wood-fired pizza concept at Newtown Baking with owner Bill Willett. Newtown Baking was eventually sold by Willett and the business closed in 2021, but Hershey has been thinking about a way to bring pizza back to Staunton ever since.

He will do that this December with Pizza Luca, a new brick oven pizza restaurant on North Lewis Street next to Silver Line Theatre and not far from Chicano Boy, the Mexican-American taquería Hershey started in 2015. Pizza Luca will be located at 213 N. Lewis St.

"It was really a special place and in my eyes, we were really doing some awesome stuff and we had a great staff and a great vibe," Hershey said of Newtown Baking. "So trying to recapture that."

When he was 19, Hershey got a job in a restaurant and worked his way from the front of the house to the back. Someone saw some potential and suggested he go to culinary school, which he did in West Palm Beach, Florida. He admitted he was never a great student in school, but something about the food industry clicked with him. He liked music. He liked mischief. And he liked partying. Hershey said the hospitality industry offered all of those.

"It felt like the right environment for the kind of person that I am," he said.

Hershey graduated from Riverheads High School, moving to the area with his uncle, who had retired from the Air Force and was working for a large corporation who gave him the option to work remotely. They moved from Northern Virginia to Augusta County, quite a culture shock for Hershey, who is half Mexican on his father's side.

Hershey had lived throughout the United States as a military kid, but never in a rural southern town. He went from a school of 3,300 students in Fairfax to one with fewer than 500 kids his senior year in Augusta County. He also went from a school with incredible diversity to one where it was him, his sister and maybe two or three other students who were non-white.

It was a big change for him, but looking back one that he said enriched his life.

"I didn't really appreciate it then, but it certainly helped me stay out of a lot of trouble that I had found in Fairfax County," he said. "And now I prefer it. I like to travel to the city. I like to travel internationally, but I really like living in a small town."

Staunton has fit the bill for him to combine that love of small town with his abilities as a chef. Pizza Luca will help him expand his footprint on Staunton's restaurant scene.

When Hershey first looked at the space on North Lewis in the summer of 2022 he thought it was too large, but since then it's been split into two separate rentals. Hershey was much happier with the smaller space, which he agreed to rent in February. He's been working on it since with plans to open in December. He had hoped it might open earlier but, as with a lot of older buildings, there were issues he ran into that needed to be addressed.

Hershey described the restaurant as fast casual 2.0, similar to Chicano Boy. He wants to keep the price point as low as possible and the quality of food as high as possible.

"So quick service, counter service," Hershey said. "We will have craft beer in the bottle, some wine and then pizza, salad, wings, pasta, basically anything that you would see from a fast food pizza joint. Imagine that menu and then knock it up on the quality scale, three to five rungs. That's what we're kind of shooting for. So crowd favorites, just better ingredients."

Hershey likes the concept of brick oven pizza, the ability to strip away the complexity to get to the essence of cooking. He likes the smokiness of the pizza, calling it "tasting the oven." The direct cooking method can preserve the raw qualities of the ingredients. For instance, Hershey said the mozzarella can maintain its creaminess without breaking it or cold cuts don't lose their quality.

"There's some purity to it, I think," he said. "Coming from a culinarian, the simplicity is beautiful. And the purity of it is somewhat romantic but alluring."

Pizza Luca will join Hershey's other food ventures, including both Chicano Boy in Staunton and Richmond and the new Chicano Boy food truck. He has some other things in the works, but isn't ready to discuss them just yet.

"I'm excited about it," Hershey said of Pizza Luca. "I know that the people that are knowledgeable are about it are quite excited."

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— Patrick Hite is a reporter at The News Leader. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Contact Patrick (he/him/his) at phite@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @Patrick_Hite. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Chicano Boy owner opening brick oven pizza restaurant in Staunton