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ELLSWORTH —
“Gourmet pizza is an oxymoron,” said Paul
Schneider, owner and pizza chef at Finelli New
York Style Pizzeria. “Pizza is vernacular food,
street food. It’s bread, cheese and sauce. You
hold it in your hand and you eat it.”
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Paul Schneider is the owner and
chef at Finelli’s. |
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After 12 hectic
years in the city, Paul and Linda Schneider sold
their popular pizzeria in Providence, R.I., and moved to Bar Harbor.
“I’d always loved Maine,” said Paul. “I loved
the peace of it, the sparse population, the low
crime rate, the casual outdoor lifestyle.”
As it turns out, Bar Harbor was a little bit too
peaceful. After two slow years, the Schneiders
realized there wasn’t enough year-round business
on the island.
“We almost left Maine,” said Linda, “but we
really liked it up here. It was so peaceful, we
didn’t want to just pack up and go home.”
In June 2003, the Schneiders moved their
business to Ellsworth. “We thought: ‘This place
is exactly what we’re looking for,’” said Paul.
“Ellsworth is busy all the time. We have good
parking, a location right in the middle of
everything … in Ellsworth, we knew we could live
up to our mission statement: to serve fine food
fast.”
A year and a half later, the Schneiders, along
with manager and right-hand man Alex Knight,
have found their rhythm.
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Customers line up for lunch at
Finelli’s in Ellsworth. |
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It’s lunchtime in early November and the line
for pizza is winding around the restaurant.
“It’s like working at a mill today,” said Paul.
“We’re crankin’ them out.”
For the next eight hours, a steady stream of
customers will file through the doors to order
thin crust pizza and sandwiches on the
Schneiders’ homemade bread.
The pies range from the standard sauce and
cheese to what the Schneiders calls their
“specialty pies.”
There’s the Satyricon, a tomato sauce pie with
Italian sausage, ricotta, fresh basil and fresh
tomatoes.
The Greek is a white pie with baby spinach, feta
cheese, fresh tomatoes and Kalamata olives.
As a special, Paul makes a clam pie with chopped
local clams with garlic, fresh parsley and
cheese.
“I aim to make pizza as good as the legendary
places,” said Paul. “We should have pizza in
Ellsworth as good as Pepe’s in New Haven, John’s
in Greenwich Village or Tacconelli’s in
Philadelphia.”
According to the Schneiders, good pizza begins
with good crust.
Paul Schneider shows off a Greek
Pizza.
—staff
PHOTOs BY Jonathan Levitt |
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At Finelli, the dough is mixed, cut and measured
for small, medium and large pies, and then
allowed to proof for up to 24 hours to develop
flavor.
“The dough should have flavor just like
everything else,” said Paul. “It shouldn’t just
be like eating a cardboard box with cheese and
sauce on it.”
When an order comes in, the balls of dough are
pulled out of the proofing rack, coated in flour
and then pressed down to get the air out.
All pizzas are made to order, stretched and
thrown by hand.
“Our dough never sees a rolling pin,” said Paul.
Before the pizza gets any toppings, cornmeal is
sprinkled on the wooden peel to give the dough
some wheels and allow it to slide easily into
the oven.
Finelli is one of the few pizza places that lay
the cheese on the dough before the sauce.
According to Paul, this gives the dough time to
set up in the oven before the sauce seeps in and
makes everything soggy.
Paul Schneider is especially particular about
toppings.
“When you put stuff on a pizza, it matters where
you put it,” he said.
On a pie with sausage and mushrooms, Schneider
lays the mushrooms under the sausage so the
juicy meat can flavor the mushrooms as the pizza
cooks. On a pizza bianco, the spinach goes down
first and is protected and slowly cooked by the
layer of cheese that covers it.
“With toppings people generally think more is
better,” said Paul.
“It’s not about more. It’s about the right
proportions. You don’t want pizza to be heavy,
you don’t want pizza to be sloppy, and you don’t
want it to be wet from too many toppings. The
flavors should be balanced, you really shouldn’t
taste just cheese or just sauce.”
To ensure a crisp and flavorful crust, the oven
at Finelli is lined with heavy bricks and set at
550 degrees.
“Nothing happens until the bricks are really
hot,” said Paul. “The heat comes up from the
bottom of the oven, through those bricks and
sucks the moisture right out of the dough. The
crust ends up light and crispy because all the
waters gone.”
The Schneiders would like to see Finelli
Pizzeria as an “Ellsworth institution.”
“We’d like to build a loyal customer base and
stay here a long time,” they said. “We know it
doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re patient,
we’ll build this place over time.”
For now, the Schneiders work six days a week
putting everything they have into making the
best pizza possible.
“This isn’t just a job,” said Paul.
“We feed people here. It’s not like a hardware
store. It’s not like here you go, here’s you’re
pound of nails, now see ya later. Here, we’re
giving people food, something to keep them
going. Hopefully, they’ll keep coming back for
that.”
Down the road, the Schneiders would like to
serve beer and wine and create a place for
people to spend some time and really enjoy their
food.
“Someday I’d even like to have a country taverna,”
said Paul. “A rustic place somewhere outside
town, just a little joint someplace like
Franklin.
“We’d have a rotisserie and a wood fired grill,
wood-burning pizza ovens, skeet shooting, bocci
ball. It would be a destination, a place to
bring the kids on a Sunday and eat pizza, drink
wine.” |
