Jeremy Maggio started making wood-fired pizzas in a trailer in Milwaukee. Years later, he’s opening a pizzeria in Wauwatosa.
For Jeremy Maggio, making wood-fired pizzas is a passion.
He started catering out of a trailer with a wood-fired oven in 2015, when he and his wife had full-time jobs. They spent the majority of their weekends for three summers attending events, setting up, taking down and making pizza.
“It was a huge amount of work, but I loved it,” Maggio said, crediting his wife, Emily, for her tireless commitment to his pizza-making dream.
Now, he plans to open Maggio’s Wood Fired Pizza at 7212 W North Ave., Wauwatosa. He will open it with co-owner Andy Fries, who has worked in the restaurant industry for more than 15 years.
The menu will include Maggio’s recipes for pizza, as well as salads, sandwiches, appetizers, desserts, espresso drinks, wine and beer, he said.
“I’ve been working on my pizza recipes for eight years now,” Maggio said. “The hard part for us is going to be getting that down to a manageable number, so it’s a good problem to have.”
The restaurant is set to open in January 2023 after some remodeling and preparation. There are about 60 indoor seats.
The building is nearly 100 years old and formerly hosted Tosa Bowl and Bun, before the restaurant closed July 22. The owners Pete and Sue Venturi opened the restaurant in 2015, and before that ran Venturi’s Market in the same location.
“We have great customers and it just seemed like the right time,” Sue Venturi said.
Maggio said he hoped to be as involved in the Wauwatosa community as the Venturis had been. He and his wife moved back to the area after working in Seattle for the past few years.
The restaurant logo, a fig leaf, is a tribute to Maggio’s nonno, or grandpa, who emigrated from Italy to the Midwest in the 1950s. He was a prolific gardener and planted fig trees in large barrels.
“The climate isn’t really meant for fig trees, and so that’s why he had them in these barrels,” Maggio said. “They would have to wheel them inside in the winter and right back out in the summer.”
Wauwatosa has about 15 other pizzerias, including BB’s on North across the street from Maggio's. But Maggio said he’s bringing something unique to the area.
“I love all pizzas but Neapolitan wood-fired pizzas are definitely my favorite,” Maggio said.
He added that he first tried one during a 2007 trip to Italy. When he returned to theSstates, they were much harder to find.
“I came to Milwaukee, there wasn’t a whole lot of it around, and I thought, ‘Why not try my hand?’” Maggio said.
Lydia Morrell can be reached at 320-444-2339 or lmorrell@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @lydia_morrell.
Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.
DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wood-fired pizzeria plans to open January in Wauwatosa
